Recalls in the food and beverage industry are becoming harder to manage as ingredients, suppliers and finished products move across complex international supply chains. The answer is not just to increase the amount of traceability data but to ensure better connections between supplier and manufacturer information.
In the food industry, manufacturers operate in a supply environment where a problem with one ingredient can quickly become a problem for multiple products, markets and businesses.
Recent recall data from Sedgwick illustrates this firsthand. Food and beverage recalls in Europe increased 7.6% in the first half of 2026, compared with the same period in 2025, even as overall European recall activity fell by 7.9%, which means the food and beverage sector is moving against the wider trend.1
The challenge is far broader than recalls. The European Commission’s May 2026 report on agri-food fraud suspicions recorded 150 suspicious notifications from a total of 760 iRASFF alerts (interactive Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed network). These included 59 cases classified as non-compliances, 52 involving product tampering and 39 involving record tampering. While the Commission does say that these are suspicions rather than confirmed fraud cases, they demonstrate a range of issues that can require businesses and authorities to establish what happened, which products are affected and where they are being distributed.2 This can be cumbersome when the information needed to answer those queries is spread across suppliers, manufacturers, systems, and markets.
A recall requires the business to connect information about the ingredient, supplier, batch, formulation, finished products and distribution route quickly enough to determine what action is necessary
When one ingredient affects an entire supply chain
The recent cereulide contamination incident involving infant formula is a good example. Investigations identified contaminated arachidonic acid (ARA) oil as the source of cereulide found in several infant formula products. Recalls began in December 2025 and expanded as more affected products and distribution routes were identified. The incident crossed national borders and involved different products, brands, and batches.
By March 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that affected formula, nutritional products, and oil mixes had been distributed in 99 countries and territories. Between 1 January and 25 February, 144 suspected and confirmed cases had been reported across 10 countries.3
The scale of the distribution was only part of the challenge. WHO also reported that complete traceability of all affected batches remained under investigation and that the extent of the ARA oil distribution was still uncertain. Secondary distribution through commercial supply chains added another layer of complexity.
A recall does not simply require a business to know where the product was made. It requires the business to connect information about the ingredient, supplier, batch, formulation, finished products and distribution route quickly enough to determine what action is necessary. While the information may already exist, the difficulty often lies in bringing it together.
Traceability needs to be connected
Traditionally, traceability focused on where ingredients and products came from and where they went. While this is fundamental to food safety, today’s supply chains are more complex and demanding.
Let’s consider a contaminated ingredient. To assess its potential impact, a manufacturer may need to identify the supplier and the affected batch, determine which formulations contain it, establish which finished products were manufactured using those formulations, and then identify the markets and customers that received them.
As these links often sit in different systems or are held by different teams, the result is that a food safety response can become an exercise in information gathering at precisely the point when speed matters most. Absent connected data, brands - unable to identify and isolate impacted batches in time - often have little choice but to recall whole product lines, resulting in increased cost and product loss.
But connected supply chain systems offer a different approach. Instead of treating supplier, ingredient, product, and compliance information as separate records, they create relationships between those records so that one piece of information can be used to understand wider implications such as a recall.
A supplier change is another good example. A change in the source of an ingredient could alter specification, allergen information, certifications, formulation, labelling, and regulatory status. If that information is disconnected, each function may have to identify and assess the change separately, but when connected, the potential impact can be identified as part of the same workflow.
As food and beverage supply chains become more global and product portfolios more complex, the amount of information needed to manage will grow
From finding information to making decisions
This is where the value of connected systems goes beyond simply putting data into one place.
The objective is not to create another repository for supplier documents, but to make information readily available when action is needed.
For procurement, this can result in a better understanding of supplier status. For technical and quality teams, it could mean connecting specifications and compliance documentation and for regulatory teams, seeing which products may be affected. These are also the principles that apply during a food safety incident and recall.
A connected system can provide the relationship between those data points, reducing the time spent establishing what is known, what is affected and what still needs to be investigated. It also changes how compliance information is managed.
Certificates, specifications and supplier documentation are often treated as evidence to collect and retain, but their value is greater when they remain part of an active information flow. An expired certificate, changed specification or missing document can signal that further action is needed rather than waiting for an issue to be discovered.
The future of food safety is connected
Food safety will always depend on robust controls, supplier relationships, testing, regulatory oversight and effective recall procedures. Technology cannot replace these fundamentals. What it can do is change how quickly an organization evaluates the information those processes generate.
As food and beverage supply chains become more global and product portfolios more complex, the amount of information needed to manage will grow. In addition, we are seeing leaner teams that must make decisions across functions without spending hours reconciling information held in different systems.
The lessons from the cereulide contamination incident are not that businesses lack information, but that it can lose value when there is an information disconnect. In food safety, it is these connections that determine how quickly a business can identify a risk, understand its scope and act.
Paul Bradley is Senior Director of Product Marketing with TraceGains. For more insights into TraceGains and its products, visit tracegains.com.
References
- https://www.sedgwick.com/en-gb/press-release/european-product-recalls-remain-elevated-as-sustained-activity-reshapes-the-risk-landscape/ - accessed September 2026
- https://food.ec.europa.eu/document/download/b2392656-4797-4ce0-a000-cc5dd1c16f83_en?filename=ff_ffn_monthly-report_202605.pdf – accessed September 2026
- https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/lower-risk-exposure-cereulide-following-continued-recall-infant-formula-products-across - accessed September 2026
