A fake federal inspection mark made its way into restaurant kitchens for almost a year, while the agencies meant to stop it lost thousands of workers. Lawmakers and food safety experts saw this coming and warned about it in writing.
Shanghai Ravioli Corporation, a Boston company, spent nearly a year sending frozen buffalo chicken rangoons and mozzarella sticks to food service kitchens in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. None of these products were federally inspected. The boxes had a fake inspection mark and a false establishment number, and about 24,900 pounds of food passed through the supply chain before anyone caught it.
The Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced the recall on August 26 and gave it the highest risk level, Class I, which is for food that could cause serious health problems or death. Since these products were never inspected, regulators do not know what might be in them, including undeclared allergens or harmful bacteria. The sell-by dates go up to June 2027, so some of this food could still be in commercial freezers.
So far, no illnesses have been reported, which is good news. The bad news is that this fake stamp case is not unusual. It happened during one of the most troubling times for American food safety in years, as the Trump administration and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have spent 19 months cutting the system’s resources.
A Summer Of Highest Risk Recalls
The wave of recalls in American kitchens this summer shows exactly what food safety regulations are meant to stop.
Regulators raised a recall of nearly 19 million eggs to the highest risk level after a Salmonella Enteritidis outbreak made at least 98 people sick and sent 26 to the hospital in 17 states.
Jalapeño peppers from Sinaloa, Mexico, distributed by Coast Citrus, spread Salmonella Javiana to 431 people in 32 states, with 57 hospitalizations. Over 90% of those interviewed said they ate at Mexican-style restaurants like Chipotle and Qdoba. The contamination also led to recalls of salsas, dips, and prepared foods at stores such as Walmart, Target, Trader Joe’s, Kroger, and Whole Foods.
Taylor Farms recalled lettuce linked to the largest Cyclospora outbreak ever recorded in the United States. This parasitic illness caused over 7,600 cases in Michigan alone this summer, with thousands more in other states.
Publix recalled its GreenWise organic frozen blueberries and mixed berries after an E. coli O145 outbreak caused a dozen severe illnesses and hospitalizations, mostly in Florida and Georgia. Over 3,000 pounds of ready-to-eat deli meats were also recalled because of possible Listeria contamination, which is one of the deadliest foodborne bacteria. Alfalfa sprouts sold in Minnesota and Wisconsin were recalled after being linked to both E. coli and Salmonella.
The Warnings Came First
None of this surprised food safety experts, since they spent 2025 warning that it could happen.
In February 2025, Jim Jones, the deputy commissioner in charge of the FDA’s Human Foods Program, resigned while thousands of health department workers were let go. A month later, Kennedy’s department said it would cut 3,500 jobs at the FDA, a 20% reduction that included over 170 people from the inspections and investigations office.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee warned Kennedy in writing that the firings would lead to more foodborne illness outbreaks and make the food supply less safe. Around the same time, the administration got rid of two long-standing federal advisory committees focused on food safety and meat and poultry inspection. The FDA also delayed a food traceability rule, meant to help investigators find outbreak sources faster, by 30 months after strong lobbying from the grocery industry.
An Inspection Force That Keeps Shrinking
The warnings did not stop any of these changes.
Federal records show the FDA lost over 4,300 employees in 2025 and 2026. The CDC lost nearly 2,900, and the USDA’s meat and poultry inspection service lost about 900. Since January 2025, the federal workforce has shrunk by more than 242,000 people.
Even before the cuts, the numbers were tough. In 2024, the FDA had only 443 food safety inspectors for about 36,600 food facilities, far fewer than the 1,500 inspectors the agency says it needs.
The situation overseas is even worse. A ProPublica investigation found that foreign food inspections dropped to fewer than 200 last year, down from about 1,000 a year before the pandemic. About two dozen current and former FDA officials blamed the staffing cuts. This is important because foreign producers now supply most of America’s seafood and over half its fresh fruit. Both of this summer’s biggest outbreaks came from imported produce: jalapeños from Sinaloa and lettuce from Taylor Farms in Mexico.
America is relying more and more on imported food. In late August, Trump announced a plan to bring in more foreign beef, which angered Republicans from cattle-producing states and led to claims that he was turning his back on American ranchers. Democratic Reporter found that the deal was linked to a bribery scheme, a $5 million payment, and a private jet.
The Cyclospora outbreak has its own timeline, and now Congress is taking a closer look at it.
In 2025, the CDC reduced FoodNet, its main foodborne illness monitoring network, from tracking eight pathogens to just two. Cyclospora was one of the pathogens dropped. Within a year, the country faced its biggest Cyclospora outbreak ever, and senators started asking Kennedy if these cuts made it harder for the government to track and respond to the outbreak.
Consumer Reports concluded that the surveillance cuts may have slowed efforts to identify the outbreak and limit the damage. Michigan’s top health official said the state’s review process is now manual and relies on outdated data systems that FoodNet was never designed to detect outbreaks, and that its actual detection systems remain in place. Experts who accept that distinction point to a deeper problem: years of funding losses and staff attrition at the agency that may be slowing its response at the exact moments when speed determines how many people get sick.
The Plan Going Forward Makes It Worse
The administration’s plan for the future continues in the same direction. It is shifting routine food inspections to the states, even though those programs have been told to expect federal funding cuts of nearly 60%. The budget proposal would also cut the FDA’s field labs, which test food samples, by more than half.
A recall means the food safety system is working at the last possible stage, after the product has already been made, shipped, and sometimes eaten. Inspectors, disease trackers, and labs that catch contamination before it reaches people are the very parts this administration keeps cutting. Experts who gave the original warnings say the risk is still rising.
This fits a pattern Democratic Reporter has followed all year: an administration that ignores warnings and lets others deal with the consequences, whether it is 50% tariffs on Canadian autos and metals that American companies said would hurt them, or cutting the food safety workforce while outbreaks increased. One company used a fake federal inspection stamp for a year. The smaller inspection force finally caught it, but Americans are left to wonder what else has slipped through.
