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Pastor Hal MayerSpeaker / Director
Friday September 11th, 2026
WRAL News, by Madison Czopek: The eggs are contaminated with salmonella. Frozen berries have been linked to an E. coli outbreak. Iceberg lettuce and who knows what else might give you explosive diarrhea. Some people have endured the barrage of frightening food news with dark humor.
“So the bread has glass in it, the lettuce has diarrhea bacteria, the eggs have salmonella,” wrote one Facebook user, poking at recalls of Pillsbury bread rolls for possible glass contamination and iceberg lettuce for cyclospora contamination. “At this point, grocery shopping is just an overpriced episode of Fear Factor.”
The jokes can be funny, but the unanswered question behind them is not: Is our food becoming less safe?
The U.S. food supply is “among the safest in the world,” said Steven Mandernach, the Association of Food and Drug Officials’ executive director. “It’s always been among the safest in the world. I see nothing that has changed.”
But it’s notoriously difficult to answer in real-time whether our food is getting less safe, food safety experts said. Most expect the Trump administration’s cuts to federal, state and local public health entities to weaken the nation’s food safety guardrails in the long run. Whether that is playing out in the short term is less clear.
Here’s what else we learned from food safety experts, and diving into the data.
The cyclosporiasis situation doesn’t prove food safety is rapidly declining.
Yes, record-breaking numbers of domestically obtained cyclosporiasis cases recorded in 45 states have heightened food safety concerns.
