Guest Editorial: Navigating the Last Mile

The meal kit industry continues to grow rapidly, with a market size projected to reach $17.8 billion in 2023, compared with $13.50 billion in 2022, according to a report from The Business Research Company. But this relatively new sector of the food industry faces some additional growing pains.

For example, FSIS reported last year that ground beef products in HelloFresh meal kits may have been associated with reported illnesses related to E. coli infection. Additionally, the plant-based meal delivery service Daily Harvest voluntarily recalled its French Lentil and Leek Crumbles product after dozens of people who ate the product became sick. The Wall Street Journal reported that several had to undergo gallbladder surgery after eating the product.

The flurry of alarming news raised concerns about the regulatory environment surrounding meal kit delivery services. The biggest issue? The lack of targeted regulatory oversight. For now, the places where meal kit delivery and food safety intersect represent a sort of wild west of food production and distribution.

A positive development happened in December 2022, however, when a trio of federal agencies—USDA, FDA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—issued a 49-page guide for how to ensure food safety in the third-party delivery (TPD) industry. The guidelines are not regulations, and companies do not have to abide by the suggestions, but they represent a good first step.

Either way, the industry’s lack of specific oversight does not mean that the products completely escape safety inspections. When food products of any kind are manufactured and packaged, they follow normal federal regulations and oversight. So, that vacuum-sealed bag of chicken thighs or the pouch of rice for a kung pao chicken meal does withstand USDA and FDA scrutiny, but once it’s packaged up into a box for shipping, it’s a different story.

Navigating the “Last Mile”

The main problem with meal kit food safety revolves around everything that happens once a kit leaves a company’s facility and heads to a person’s home—what FDA dubs the “last mile.”

With traditional food channels, such as grocery stores, the link between the manufacturing facility and the refrigerated shelves of the supermarket remains intact. The trucks are refrigerated if items require refrigeration. Inspectors scrutinize the trucks for signs of rodents or insects, and for holes in the truck that allow unwanted creatures and substances to enter. When the trucks reach their destinations, workers unload the boxes and direct them to their proper places, including freezers and refrigerators. All of this undergoes recordkeeping and regulatory oversight.

But with most meal kit deliveries, oversight vanishes once the products get packed into boxes. From there, companies use services such as UPS, the U.S. Postal Service, DHL, Amazon Prime, and other delivery outfits to ship boxes to customers. What else are the trucks carrying, other than the meal kits? Potentially hazardous substances, such as containers of Drano and dishwashing detergents, aerosol cans, nail polish remover, pesticides? It might all be packed helter skelter in a delivery truck. Once the products reach their destinations, often front porches and apartment lobbies, they sit until their owners whisk them away to their kitchens and ovens. This entire leg of the journey lacks FDA or USDA oversight.

The meal kit facility itself can stand as a source of concern. A wilderness of potentially unregulated control points there could affect food safety. For example, workers at a meal kit company could use unsanitary tables to repackage food they have received from suppliers, such as meat processors.

Still, I think the larger issue hinges on delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted mail service, for example. Supply chain issues combined with labor shortages and increased reliance on home deliveries snarled delivery times. With many meal kits, packages are supposed to arrive within two to three days, and the cooling device they contain will be dry ice. But what happens if it takes five to seven days to get the package out? In a regulated environment, this would be rare, but in the world of meal kit delivery, it can be anyone’s guess.