This Massive Recall Took 10,000 Pounds Of Pasta Off Store Shelves

Food recalls are part of living in today's regulated society. There have been some doozies, like these 10 of the worst cereal recalls to ever hit the U.S., or this waffle recall that occurred at Costco locations. You might not think "pasta" when you hear about food getting called back into the stores from where they were purchased, but it actually happened not so long ago in March 2021. That was when the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a High, Class I-type recall on nearly 10,000 pounds of ravioli and tortellini items that were filled with beef and poultry products.

It wasn't because the FSIS found an undeclared allergen or a foodborne pathogen; it was because the pasta products hadn't been inspected at all. They came from the Avanza Pasta LLC plant in Evanston, Illinois, and were luckily only shipped to three different states, including Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. However, they did end up in restaurants, as well as on supermarket freezer shelves, which meant there was a likelihood that they went home with shoppers and could still be found in their freezers at the time of the alert's issuance. Luckily, however, no one reported any illness or harm caused by the uninspected pasta.

Formal food inspections in the U.S. go as far back as the Lincoln Administration, when the 16th president founded the Department of Agriculture in 1862. Since then, it has evolved to meet new, rising challenges; one example is the publication of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" in 1905, which exposed the unsanitary meatpacking conditions at the time, prompting an uproar among concerned citizens. As a result, the government was forced to take action, and did so within the next year.

You see, food inspections are vitally important for public health and safety. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) help protect the general public against crises like foodborne illnesses (including bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella) and foreign matter in their food. These two governmental bodies seemingly embrace the old adage, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," preferring to stop an outbreak or other public health disaster before it can occur, versus treating crises after they have happened.

Which is why the Avanza Pasta recall was so potentially harmful. Though it (thankfully) turned out all right, without that food undergoing routine manufacturing inspection before being shipped out to consumers, it could have contained anything, from life-threatening bacteria to an undeclared allergen, to strands of metal wire, as in this 2024 recall for Perdue chicken products — and it wouldn't have been discovered until it was too late.