Food recalls frequently generate headlines and public concern because of their associated safety risks and health hazards. To help protect consumers, government officials have developed a system of regulation and oversight—a shared responsibility of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture—to identify hazardous products and issue recalls to minimize those risks to consumers. Recalls are a nationwide concern, but some states are more vulnerable than others. To calculate which states have been most impacted by food recalls in recent years, researchers combined data on recall events from both the USDA and the FDA for the years 2020–2024, then ranked states accordingly.
