• by Todd Wasserman , Staff Writer, June 2, 2022

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration recalled Jif peanut butter because of a link between Jif and salmonella. The FDA also recalled fruit and vegetable products from Del Monte, fudge by Fudgementals sold at some Walmart stores, and fresh-cut fruit snack trays and cups sold by Country Fresh.

The Jif recall comes shortly after the makers of Skippy peanut butter recalled select products because they may contain steel fragments. There were no consumer complaints linked to the recall, representatives from Skippy said.

Of course, those recalls come on the heels of Abbott Nutrition’s voluntary recalls of its baby formulas last month. That came after a national shortage of baby formula hit in the beginning of the year.

The recalls come as a researcher found that product recalls recently hit a 10-year high. Sedgwick found that more than 900 million units have been recalled in various industries, including automotive, consumer products and food.

In a statement, Sedwick concluded that “U.S. regulators have started off 2022 with increased enforcement activity and stricter scrutiny over the automotive, consumer product, food and beverage, pharmaceutical and medical device industries.”

According to the researcher, the number of consumer product recalls jumped 63.8% for the first-quarter of 2022. While food recall events initiated by the FDA fell 12.7%, their average size rose 328.4%, to 1.3 million units.

The news comes after a spate of recalls since 2000, including Volkswagen’s diesel engine recall of 2015, Merck’s Vioxx recall of 2004 and Firestone’s defective tire recall of 2000.