5 Food Safety Trends for 2023

What to look out for this year

Last week I shared my top food fraud trends for 2023. This week, it’s food safety trends.

Here’s what I’m seeing more of lately, in the world of food safety, and these are trends that I expect to continue through 2023 and beyond.

1. Direct-to-consumer food businesses making mistakes

Direct-to-consumer food businesses sell their products exclusively online, or mostly online, and don’t supply major retailers. It’s a more profitable business model than traditional manufacturing, because the business can charge consumers higher prices than they would get by selling wholesale.

Entrepreneurs love it!

The problem with this model is that these businesses are subject to less food safety oversight than manufacturers who supply to big retailers, because they don’t get audited by their customers. And ‘boot-strapping’ entrepreneurs don’t always have the food safety knowledge that they need, or the desire to pay for experts to help.

Last year we saw Daily Harvest, a direct-to-consumers company, accused of poisoning hundreds of their customers after they used a questionable ingredient in one or more of their products (check out Issues #44, #46, 48 and #64 for our…