I mean it’s literally quoted in your link

> “The number of recalls does not necessarily correlate with the level of surveillance,” said Robert Custard, an environmental health expert who also represents the West Virginia Association of Sanitarians. “Some years you're going to have more than others because of the luck of the draw. This year you may have less total recalls, but the cyclospora outbreak that we had this summer may have the highest number of human cases for any foodborne outbreak in recent history.”

Custard, who worked at the Virginia Department of Health for more than two decades, said cuts to public health staffing and funding can mean fewer people are available to inspect and test possible food-safety problems before they cause illness.

"When you do less testing, you're going to find less problems," Custard said. "When you find less problems, you end up with fewer recalls."

>"When you do less testing, you're going to find less problems," Custard said. "When you find less problems, you end up with fewer recalls."

This isn't necessarily true though. Issues found by inspection only occasionally lead to recalls. Most of the time, it's minor corrective action (called a noncompliance record) like "An employee wasn't following sanitation rule X, show us that you are properly training your employees to follow sanitation rule X".

This recall is not driven by a food safety concern! It's mildly punitive, and is done to encourage trust. Just like that time costco had to throw away a truck full of butter over a labeling issue, the American food system works very hard to ensure that certain labels on food mean something, so that consumers can make informed decisions in the supermarket and therefore have a semi-functional free market experience.

Recalls happen from positive evidence of a pathogen, from reported illness, or from noncompliant product. If you have no inspections, then companies may normalization of deviance their way to less safe products, which can cause more illness, which would cause more recalls.

Fewer inspections could only lead to fewer recalls if the majority of recalls are labeling issues or otherwise never would have caused illness.

Just like Trump's solution to COVID testing: don't test and the numbers are 0!