It's like clockwork. It's been, oh, a few months since we've heard of a ground beef recall, so guess we're due for another! The latest to sweep the nation has sickened at least 16 people in five states, according to federal health officials. They all came down with salmonella food poisoning linked to ground beef. 

Thankfully, no one has died, but half of those affected were hospitalized. Most of the illnesses reported were in Michigan, though others occurred in Arizona, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

The origin of the toxic beef?

If you've got an Annie's frozen pizza in your freezer at home, better listen up. The organic and all-natural food brand is voluntarily recalling certain pies after it was discovered that metal might have been an accidental topping. After it was found that a metal mesh screen had malfunctioned at one of their flour plants, Annie's decided to recall their "Homegrown Frozen Pizza" in case some metal fragments had fallen in their recipes.

Here's what you need to know:

I've been craving hamburgers lately. Well, actually, I was craving hamburgers. And then I read this: 10 million burgers with horse meat recalled. Oh Mr. Ed! I know horse meat isn't poisonous. It poses no special health hazard. But I just don't like the idea of horse meat sneaking up on me like that -- in my burger. I'm not quite ready for that food adventure.

So there's always the haunting question: how did this happen? Beef can get contaminated by bacteria because it's teeny-tiny. But horses are huge. You would kind of notice if a horse wandered into the beef processing plant, wouldn't you?

Oh what a year for food recalls. In the past 12 months we've seen everything from the usual ground beef and lettuce recalls to the wacky, like breakfast cereal and licorice recalls. What did we do in the days before the Internet? I can't imagine how much harder it was to get the word out about food recalls. Anyway, just for fun, we thought we'd review the 10 biggest food recalls of the year.

In the midst of all the recalls we've been seeing of everyday foods that often land in our kids' lunch boxes or on the dinner table, you have to wonder what can be done -- and what is being done to make our food safer. Well, someone over at The Kansas City Star decided perhaps it was time to take a closer look at our country's food safety measures, particularly in the beef industry. What they found is seriously shocking, disturbing, and altogether disgusting, so if you haven't eaten your lunch yet ... consider yourself forewarned!

Over the course of a two-year beef investigation, they found evidence of serious health risks, like fecal contamination, which increases the risk of E. coli. GROSS! And that's just the tip of this stomach-turning iceberg ...

It seems like every other day, we're hearing about a new food recall. Sometimes we may feel like we're reading nothing more than another fearmongering story, but the sad reality is that one in six of us get sick from contaminated food. Overall, more than 48 million Americans get sick from contaminated food every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those cases, at least 3,000 die. Shirley Mae Almer was one of those 3,000. She died in 2008 after eating peanut butter contaminated with Salmonella. But before that, she had beaten brain cancer.

Her son and a now-advocate for food safety legislation, Jeff Almer, is speaking out about his mother, telling HuffPo Live, "She had beaten brain cancer ... and, you know, to beat brain cancer and die from simply eating peanut butter is just inexcusable." I'll say. Crazy enough, no one has yet been held accountable for this tragedy.

Forget cantaloupe, beef, and peanut butter ... Now it's time to worry about certain frozen chicken dinners. U.S. and Canadian officials have noted that 4,865 pounds of Trader Joe's frozen butter chicken and rice were recalled for possible Listeria contamination. The recall is already sounding similar to the widespread ground beef one from a couple months back, being that it also was imported from Canada.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Aliya's Foods Ltd. are conducting the recall and will verify U.S. companies sent shipments of the recalled products have been notified and have removed them from sale. In the meantime, we should all smack our foreheads. Really, why does this continue to happen?

When I buy organic food, I assume I'm getting something that's safer and healthier than the conventionally-processed alternative. But it turns out that's not always the case. On Monday the Food and Drug Administration pulled the plug at the country's largest organic peanut butter manufacturer because it was crawling with salmonella.

The Sunland Inc. plant, which produces peanut butter and other nut butters for Trader Joe's, has been plagued with health problems this year and had been shut down, voluntarily, since September after several product recalls because of salmonella contamination. By the beginning of October, 101 products had been recalled.