FDA vs. USDA food recalls: Classes I, II and III explained

Two agencies, one dividing line

Almost every food recall in the United States is run by one of two agencies, and the split decides where the notice is posted, what it looks like, and where you go to check a product. The line is the food itself:

• USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) covers meat, poultry, processed egg products, and catfish.
• The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) covers nearly everything else — produce, seafood, dairy, baked goods, snacks, drinks, infant formula, and shell eggs.

The border cases surprise people. Shell eggs are FDA, but the liquid eggs in a carton of egg substitute are USDA. A closed-face meat sandwich is a USDA product; an open-face one is FDA. Soups turn on how much meat they contain. If a food in your kitchen could plausibly be either, check both — our guide to checking any product you own walks through the order to search in.

What Classes I, II and III mean

Both agencies grade every recall with the same three classes, in the same words. The class describes the hazard, not the size of the recall — a Class I can cover a single lot, and a Class III can cover a million units.

Class I — there is a reasonable probability that eating the product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death. This is the grade for pathogens where they do the most harm: Listeria or Salmonella on ready-to-eat foods, E. coli O157:H7 in raw ground beef. Act the day you see one.

Class II — there is a remote probability of adverse health consequences. Typical Class II recalls involve a small amount of an undeclared allergen, or a piece of nonsharp foreign material such as soft plastic. Check the product before you eat it again.

Class III — eating the product is not expected to cause adverse health consequences at all. Excess water in a product is the agencies' own example. These recalls are usually about rules, not risk — worth knowing about, rarely worth a trip to the store.

One FDA note: on the FDA side the same ladder also covers drugs and devices, so a Class I on an eye-drop notice and a Class I on a ground-beef notice mean the same thing — the hazard wording is shared across the whole agency.

The powers are not the same

The biggest real difference between the two agencies is what happens when a company says no.

FDA can order the recall. The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011 gave FDA mandatory recall authority: if a company refuses a voluntary recall and the food meets the serious-harm standard, FDA can order distribution stopped and the product recalled. In the Act's first decade FDA used that power only three times — not because the authority is weak, but because companies almost always comply when FDA asks. Nearly every FDA recall you will ever see is labeled voluntary.

FSIS cannot order one. Meat and poultry recalls are voluntary by law. FSIS's leverage is different, and it is heavy: the agency can detain suspect product for up to 20 days, ask a federal court to seize and condemn it, and withdraw its inspectors from a plant — which shuts the plant down. When FSIS believes a product is a risk but no recall is in place, it issues a Public Health Alert instead, which is the notice to look for when a hazard has no recall attached.

So when a notice says "voluntary recall," read it as paperwork, not as a measure of how serious the problem is. The class tells you that.

How to tell which agency recalled your food

• Look for the inspection mark. Meat and poultry packages carry the USDA mark of inspection with an establishment number — "EST." followed by digits, inside the mark or on the label. That number is the fastest way to match your package to an FSIS notice, and FSIS notices are organized around it.
• FDA products carry codes, not marks. FDA enforcement reports list the firm, the product, and a recall number; your match is the lot code and UPC on the package.
• The food itself is the first clue. Ground beef, chicken, deli turkey: start with FSIS — our ground beef recalls guide tracks those notices. Shell eggs, produce, cheese, snacks: start with FDA — see egg recalls for how an FDA shell-egg notice reads.
• Still not sure? Search the full list at recalls or by category at food recalls, which pulls both agencies' notices into one place.

What to do, whichever agency it is

1. Stop eating it. Do not taste it to check, and do not feed it to pets unless the notice says that is safe.
2. Match the codes exactly. Lot, UPC, establishment number, and dates — not just the product name. Keep the packaging until you have matched it.
3. Follow the notice's remedy. Most food notices tell you to return the product to the store for a refund or to throw it away. Do not donate recalled food.
4. Watch for the class to change. Notices are updated as investigations widen; a recall that starts narrow can grow. The alert list at the bottom of this page exists for exactly that.

Definitions, jurisdiction and agency powers checked October 22, 2026 against FDA and USDA FSIS published recall guidance. The agency notice for your product is always the final word.

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