September 2026 Food Safety Recall Bulletin: FDA, FSIS, CFIA, FSA, RASFF, FSAI and FSANZ
The month to mid-September 2026 was dominated by post-process contamination in chilled, ready-to-eat foods. Listeria monocytogenes accounted for the largest share of notified food alerts across the six jurisdictions we track, appearing in deli salads, cured and cooked meats, soft cheeses and, unusually, twice in packs of pitted black olives on UK shelves. Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) featured strongly in the UK and Ireland, in filled wraps, chilled pasta salad, sprouting seeds and a raw goat milk kefir. Salmonella notifications in the United States clustered around low-moisture and sprouted products. Alongside the microbiological picture, several recalls in the period were caused by process and packing control failures rather than raw-material contamination — a mispacked chilled salad in the UK, a fermentation-driven spoilage recall in Ireland, and a run of undeclared allergen alerts traced to labelling and line-changeover errors. The summaries below are grouped by regulatory authority, with links to the original notices.
United States — FDA and USDA FSIS
The FDA's recall listing for the period is weighted towards chilled ready-to-eat products and low-moisture ingredients. Made Fresh Salads Inc. of Bay Shore, New York recalled its full range of ready-to-eat deli style salads and cream cheese on 6 September because of potential Listeria monocytogenes contamination. The affected stock carried expiration dates from 3 to 18 September 2026 and was delivered directly to retail stores and distributors across Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and New York City. Recalls of this type — short-shelf-life chilled product, direct delivery, a single production environment — depend heavily on the accuracy of use-by dating and on chill temperatures being held from the packing room through to the retail cabinet.
Two Salmonella recalls followed. Evergreen Fresh Sprouts, LLC recalled broccoli sprouts on 10 September over possible Salmonella contamination, and Foods Alive Inc. recalled organic moringa leaf powder on 4 September for the same reason. Sprouted seeds and dried botanical powders share a recurring difficulty: neither is subject to a validated lethal step before consumption, so control rests almost entirely on incoming material, water quality and segregation.
Allergen labelling failures also featured. FreshPoint Central Florida, Inc. recalled Created Fresh! Cranberry Chicken Salad Wedge Sandwiches on 8 September because egg was improperly declared, and Whole Foods Market issued an allergy alert for undeclared egg in Cabricharme cheese on 11 September.
On the USDA side, Prime Line Distributors, Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Ferrarini USA, Inc. of Hoboken, New Jersey recalled approximately 1,513 pounds of imported ready-to-eat pork guanciale on 6 September after a sample confirmed positive for Listeria monocytogenes. The dry-cured pork jowl product was produced in Italy on 21 May 2026 and imported during July; the problem was found during routine import re-inspection testing rather than by the producer. Product had been shipped to foodservice and retail in eight states. FSIS classified the recall as Class I, its most serious category.
Earlier in the window, City Foods, Inc. of Chicago recalled approximately 3,215 pounds of ready-to-eat pastrami and corned beef products that may have been adulterated with Listeria monocytogenes. The products were produced on 16 July with a 60-day shelf life and distributed to foodservice locations in Illinois, Iowa and Michigan, and from there nationally. No confirmed illnesses were reported in either meat recall.
Canada — CFIA
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency's most significant notice in the period concerned cooked poultry. Olymel S.E.C/L.P. recalled Olymel brand Chicken Breast Strips on 11 September because of possible Listeria monocytogenes contamination. The affected product was the 2 × 175 g pack, UPC 0 69094 63596 3, with a best-before date of 2026 OC 10, distributed in Quebec. CFIA recorded the recall as Class 1 and noted it was triggered by the company rather than by regulatory sampling — a point worth drawing out, since company-triggered recalls generally indicate that internal environmental monitoring or finished-product testing did its job. No illnesses were reported.
Separately, and on the same day, CFIA published a recall of Rossdown Farms & Natural Foods brand Meal Starters Black Garlic Chicken Breast products due to undeclared soy. The Class 2 recall covered several formats distributed nationally. Undeclared soy in a marinated poultry product is characteristically a specification or recipe-control issue rather than a contamination event, and typically points at a change in a compound ingredient that did not flow through to the finished-pack label.
United Kingdom — Food Standards Agency
The FSA issued a run of alerts in which chilled ready-to-eat products dominated. Two near-identical Listeria monocytogenes recalls affected pitted black olives at different retailers: Sainsbury's recalled Inspired to Cook by Sainsbury's Pitted Black Olives on 4 September, and Waitrose recalled Waitrose Essential Pitted Black Olives on 10 September. The Waitrose notice covered 120 g packs with use-by dates of 13, 18 and 27 September 2026. Olives in brine are not an obvious Listeria vehicle, and the appearance of two separate retailer recalls within a week points to a shared upstream process rather than a store-level problem.
Cross-border product also featured. Macroom Buffalo Cheese Products recalled Macroom Buffalo Cheese Mozzarella and Bocconcini in Northern Ireland on 28 August after Listeria monocytogenes was found in the products.
STEC accounted for three further alerts. Tesco recalled Tesco Finest Mozzarella Pearls & Pesto Orzo Salad 215 g on 25 August over possible contamination with E. coli (STEC). Summit Foods recalled four filled wrap lines on 21 August for the same hazard — Snacksters Chicken Fajita Wrap, Snacksters Hoi Sin Wrap, East Street Deli Sweet Chilli Chicken Wrap and Target a Snack Chicken Fajita Wrap. Slightly earlier in August, A.Vogel Ltd recalled Rapunzel bioSnacky Das Original Red Clover Seeds for Sprouts and Seedlings after STEC was found in the seed itself, with a parallel recall issued in Scotland by Food Standards Scotland.
Two allergy alerts in early September stemmed from packing control rather than formulation. Tesco recalled Tesco Finest Caesar & Smoked Bacon Coleslaw on 3 September because some packs contained Tesco Finest Four Cheese Potato Salad instead, bringing undeclared mustard with it. On the same day, Waitrose & Partners recalled Waitrose Rhubarb Crumble because the product contained oats (gluten) not declared on the label — a case complicated by home-freezing instructions that extend the period in which affected stock may still be in domestic freezers well past the printed use-by date.
Readers should note that food recalls and allergy alerts in the United Kingdom are issued by the Food Standards Agency, not the MHRA, which regulates medicines and medical devices.
European Union — RASFF
The Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed continued to underpin the cross-border element of several national recalls in this period, and the pattern is instructive: in each case, product manufactured in one member state reached consumers in another before the hazard was identified. A Netherlands-produced raw goat milk kefir was withdrawn in Ireland after STEC was detected; Irish-produced buffalo mozzarella and bocconcini were recalled in Northern Ireland after Listeria monocytogenes was found; and a Belgian raw-milk cheese was the subject of an allergen alert in the United States. Details of individual notifications, including hazard category, notifying country and country of origin, are published through the RASFF Window portal, which remains the authoritative source for EU-level notification data.
For producers exporting within or into the EU, the practical lesson from this month is that the interval between production and detection was measured in weeks, not days. Traceability records and time-temperature evidence covering that full interval — including transport legs and intermediate storage — are what allow a recall to be scoped tightly rather than broadly.
Ireland — FSAI
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland issued the period's clearest example of a process failure rather than a contamination event. On 9 September, the FSAI published Alert Notification 2026.55, recalling specific batches of Lidl's Batts Taco Mayonnaise due to spoilage caused by fermentation. The 425 g packs carried best-before dates of 21 and 22 April 2027, and the product was of Irish origin. A fermentation-driven spoilage recall on an ambient emulsified sauce with a seven-month remaining life indicates that the preservation system — pH, water activity, preservative level, or the thermal step that should have reduced the spoilage population — did not perform as the shelf-life validation assumed. A closely related recall of a specific batch of SuperValu Taco Mayonnaise followed on 8 September.
The following day, the FSAI published Alert Notification 2026.56, recalling a batch of De Bonte Weide Biologische Kefir Van Rauwe Geitenmelk — a 500 ml raw goat milk kefir of Netherlands origin with a best-before date of 14 September 2026 — because of the presence of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli. Raw-milk fermented products carry no kill step, so the outcome depends entirely on herd health, milking hygiene and the speed and depth of acidification.
On 27 August the FSAI recalled a specific batch of Macroom Buffalo Cheese Mozzarella, Bocconcini and Burrata products, the Irish counterpart to the FSA notice above. Three allergen alerts also fell in the period: allergens not labelled in English in batches of Lidl's Crownfield Musli Riegel bars on 3 September, undeclared milk and egg in a batch of Lemanfen Strawberry Waffle Rolls on 31 August, and undeclared allergens in a mispacked batch of Flahavan's Chocolate & Hazelnut Irish Oaty Flapjacks on 19 August.
Australia and New Zealand — FSANZ
Food Standards Australia New Zealand recorded a comparatively quiet month, with a single microbiological recall. On 4 September, Bottega 1995 recalled Brie Mon Sire 1 kg in South Australia due to potential microbial (Listeria monocytogenes) contamination. Soft ripened cheese remains one of the most consistently notified Listeria categories worldwide, reflecting high moisture, near-neutral surface pH and extended chilled ripening and distribution.
The remaining Australian recalls in the window were allergen and foreign-body matters. Alog Australian Wholesalers Pty Ltd recalled Red Hat Cookia Matcha Chocolate Flavor 80 g in Victoria on 11 September for undeclared egg, milk and soy. KB Seafood Company recalled JC Seafood Sweet Chilli & Lime Salmon Portions 275 g in Western Australia on 10 September for undeclared soy. Greenstorm Foods, trading as Austral Herbs, recalled Certified Organic Premium Peppermint Leaf across six states and territories on 9 September because of foreign matter (metal). Earlier in the window, on 18 August, Chen Foods recalled Mr Chen's Szechuan Chilli Oil 250 g nationally for undeclared peanut.
What This Means for Food Producers
Read across the six jurisdictions, this month's notices have less to do with exotic hazards than with the durability of routine controls. Chilled ready-to-eat products — deli salads, cooked and cured meats, soft cheeses, filled wraps, prepared salads — again accounted for the majority of pathogen recalls. These are products where safety is maintained not by a final lethal step in the consumer's kitchen but by a validated process upstream and by unbroken temperature control thereafter. Where a hazard was found after the fact, as with the imported guanciale detected on re-inspection, the interval between production and detection ran to several months.
Two further threads are worth noting. First, at least one recall reflected preservation and process control rather than raw-material contamination: the fermentation spoilage recall on an ambient emulsified sauce carrying a seven-month remaining shelf life. Second, a meaningful share of allergen alerts arose from packing and changeover errors — a coleslaw pack containing potato salad, a mispacked flapjack batch — which are process-verification failures that happen to present as allergen risk.
None of this is new, and none of it points to a single fix. A thorough HACCP protocol, with hazard analysis that is genuinely current for the product and the process, and with critical limits that have been validated rather than inherited, remains the most effective defence available to a food producer. Within such a protocol, proper time-temperature verification does specific and limited work: it provides objective evidence that a thermal process reached the conditions its validation assumed, and that chilled and frozen product stayed within specification through storage, transport and handover. Temperature Indicators Ltd products — irreversible thermal labels, cook indicators, cold chain and freeze indicators — are designed to form part of that verification layer, sitting alongside, not in place of, calibrated instrumentation, environmental monitoring, supplier approval and the rest of a working food safety management system. We would not suggest that any single control would have prevented any of the recalls described above; the honest position is that recalls of this kind are usually the result of several controls giving way at once, and that the evidence trail left by good verification is what makes the difference between a tightly scoped recall and a broad one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does Listeria monocytogenes appear so often in chilled ready-to-eat food recalls?
Listeria monocytogenes grows at refrigeration temperatures, which removes the protection that chilling provides against most other foodborne pathogens. It also persists in wet processing environments — drains, conveyors, slicers, brine systems — so contamination typically occurs after any lethal step, during slicing, filling or packing. Because affected product looks and smells normal, detection depends on environmental monitoring and finished-product testing rather than on sensory inspection.
What is the difference between a Class I or Class 1 recall and other classes?
In both the United States and Canada, the highest class denotes a situation where there is a reasonable probability that consuming the product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death. Pathogen contamination of ready-to-eat food and undeclared major allergens capable of causing anaphylaxis generally fall into this category. Lower classes indicate remote probability of adverse consequences, or a temporary or reversible health effect.
Why do recalls appear in several countries at once?
Ingredients and finished products move across borders routinely, and notification systems such as RASFF in the EU exist precisely so that a hazard identified in one country reaches authorities in every country that received the product. This month's buffalo mozzarella and raw goat milk kefir recalls both crossed at least one border between production and the shelf. For exporters, the practical consequence is that traceability records need to support scoping a recall in every destination market, not only the domestic one.
Does a company-triggered recall indicate a worse problem than a regulator-triggered one?
Not necessarily, and often the opposite. When an authority records that a recall was triggered by the company — as CFIA did for the Olymel chicken breast strips — it generally means the producer's own environmental monitoring or finished-product testing identified the issue and acted on it. Recalls triggered by regulatory sampling or by an outbreak investigation may indicate that internal controls did not detect the problem first.
What role does time-temperature verification play in a HACCP plan?
Time-temperature verification provides documented evidence that a critical control point operated within its validated limits — that a cook reached the required temperature for the required time, or that chilled or frozen stock did not exceed its specification during storage and transport. It supports, but does not replace, hazard analysis, validation of critical limits, calibrated monitoring instrumentation, environmental monitoring programmes and corrective action procedures. Its value in a recall situation is evidential: it narrows the population of product that cannot be shown to have been correctly processed or held.
About Temperature Indicators Ltd
Temperature Indicators Ltd is a global service provider specialising in temperature-sensitive labels, tags, and indicators for cold chain monitoring, process validation, and regulatory compliance. With 35 years of experience and warehouse stock in both the UK (Manchester) and the US (near Santa Barbara, California), we supply food manufacturers, pharmaceutical distributors, sterile services departments, and logistics providers worldwide with the temperature monitoring solutions they need to maintain compliance. Contact us for expert guidance on temperature monitoring for your application.
Legal Disclaimer
The information provided in this bulletin is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, regulatory, or compliance advice. Regulatory requirements are subject to change and may vary by jurisdiction, product type, and business size. Organisations are responsible for ensuring their compliance with all applicable regulations. Temperature Indicators Ltd has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information presented based on publicly available sources as of the date of publication. This bulletin should not be relied upon as a substitute for independent legal or regulatory advice.
- Temperature Indicators Staff
