Recently there have been a rise in recalls due to listeria, now there is a report saying frozen food from over 42 brands maybe affected. Sometimes it's worth paying a bit more to ensure safe food. Now people have to throw out any suspected food, or take it in for a refund which will be hard and is inconvenient. It is a concern because some organic products are affected to. I recommend always to look at how cold the storage facilities are where you buy food, because if they aren't good, your frozen food maybe unsafe.
Last month there was this recall of Mars products like Snickers and Milky Way due to some plastic objects found in some products which were manufactured in Netherlands. Although the problem was not that critical, Mars voluntarily made a recall to avoid blowing up the issue. What if you had bought a lot of Mars product, say you have a store? That would definitely be a sorry problem for getting a refund is not that easy especially when the recalled product is imported.
I remember the tuna recall recently. I had to help my mother in law check over 20 cans of tuna. I don't know why they hord tuna...
It's better to be safe than sorry though. Return the food and get a refund or throw it out because if you don't and you get listeriosis . . . you could end up being hospitalized and spending more money than you should have in the first place. Sometimes I envy people who don't have to buy frozen food. I have a friend who lives in a place where they hardly ever buy packaged food. It's a 4th world country he lives in. They buy all their food in a market [so he told me] and though the prices change all the time, they never have to deal with anything like this [throwing out food because it might be contaminated]. Wish it was the same here.
Recalls are really costly and incovenient particularly for manufacturers and consumers. Manufacturers will not gain any profit from their products throughout the duration of the recall. Not to mention their reputation may suffer a blow. Consumers on one hand will start to mistrust the products subjected to recall even after the recall has been lifted. Doubt has already been planted and it will take some time to build the trust again.
Thankfully there have not been many recalls in my area or at least not much that I'm aware of. I think if I happened to get hold of a product that was later recalled I'd start to be forever paranoid. There was once a video that went viral of someone cutting open a Reese's pieces and inside were so many maggots. Have to say I got put off of Reese's from that point on, though from what I heard it's not that uncommon for most chocolate products, but honestly I don't know what to believe and I tend to think that's mostly just damage control by Reese's.
