Organic Food Recalls Have Been Up This Year

Organic food recalls are more frequent nowadays.

Stericycle, a service that manages medical waste, took a look at the list of recalled foods from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and noticed that seven percent of the foods recalled this year were organic.

"What's striking is that since 2012, all organic recalls have been driven by bacterial contamination, like salmonella, listeria, and hepatitis A, rather than a problem with a label," Kevin Pollack, vice president of Stericycle, told The New York Times. "This is a fairly serious and really important issue because a lot of consumers just aren't aware of it."

But organizations such as the Organic Trade Association (OTA) have a different interpretation of this spike in recalled organic foods, citing that sales of organic products have been increasing. "Sales of organic food in the U.S. have risen by almost 25 percent just since 2012, and the number of organic products on the market is increasing steadily as demand for organic increases," Gwendolyn Wyard, senior director of regulatory and technical affairs at the OTA, told the Times.

The OTA notes that organic product sales are up 11.3 percent from 2013.