Dried and Dehydrated Food Manufacturing (U.S.) — NAICS 311423

An investor's primer. Figures marked as federal statistics are the most authoritative available; market-research and company figures are cited separately. Forward-looking statements are written as judgments, not facts.

1. Overview

This is the business of removing water from food — drying fruit into raisins and prunes, dehydrating onions, garlic, potatoes and vegetables into flakes and powders, and freeze-drying fruit, meals, snacks and pet food. Taking the water out (produce is roughly 80–90% water by weight) turns a bulky, perishable crop into a lightweight, shelf-stable, concentrated product that ships cheaply, stores for months to years without refrigeration, and slots into everything from instant mashed potatoes to backpacking meals to soup seasoning.

Why an investor cares: it sits at the intersection of two durable demand stories — convenience/shelf-stability (emergency food, camping, foodservice, exports) and health-forward snacking (freeze-dried fruit and clean-label treats) — while remaining, at its core, a commodity-processing business whose profits swing with crop prices and energy costs.

Public vs. private ways in are lopsided. There is essentially no large U.S. pure-play you can buy on a stock exchange. The industry is dominated by grower-owned cooperatives, family-owned manufacturers, private-equity-backed roll-ups, and captive divisions of big diversified food companies. Public-market exposure is mostly a thin slice inside larger businesses; the cleanest ownership routes are private. Details are in sections 4 and 10.

2. What it is and how it's structured

NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 311423 covers establishments primarily engaged in (1) drying — including freeze-drying — and/or dehydrating fruits, vegetables, soup mixes and bouillon, or (2) drying/dehydrating ingredients and packaging them with other purchased dry ingredients such as rice and pasta.[1] Index examples include dehydrated potato flakes and granules, dried onion and garlic, raisins, dried prunes/dates/apricots, freeze-dried fruit and meals, soup and bouillon mixes.[1]

What it excludes (adjacent codes matter for classification): rice milling and packaging is NAICS 311212; dry pasta is 311824; vegetable flour/meal is 311211; mixing already-dried ingredients into soup/bouillon (without doing the drying) is 311999; dry salad-dressing and sauce mixes are 311942.[1] Two commercially important cousins also sit outside this code: dried/cured meat snacks and jerky fall under animal (meat) processing (NAICS 3116), and frozen potato products (fries, hash browns) are frozen-food manufacturing (NAICS 31141) — relevant because the biggest potato companies are mostly frozen, with dehydration a smaller line.

Operating model. Conventional operations wash, inspect and prepare raw produce; often blanch, cook or mash it; remove water with hot-air, drum, vacuum or other dryers; mill or size the resulting material; blend where appropriate; and package against moisture and oxygen. Freeze-drying first freezes the food and then removes ice by sublimation under vacuum. USDA research describes freeze-drying as slow and energy-intensive relative to hot-air drying, though it preserves texture and flavor well; shelf stability ultimately depends not just on drying but also on moisture-proof, hermetically sealed packaging.[2]

Geography. Conventional dehydrators tend to sit near crop production because inbound produce is bulky, wet and perishable, while the finished product is lighter and easier to ship. Potato dehydration is consequently concentrated in Idaho and the Pacific Northwest; fruit drying has a large California presence. For perspective, Idaho, Washington and Oregon represented 82% of season-to-date potato-processing volume reported by eight surveyed states through March 2026.[3]

Ownership mix. Four archetypes coexist: grower cooperatives (raisins, prunes), private/family manufacturers (dehydrated potato, freeze-dried), PE- and sovereign-fund-backed platforms, and divisions of publicly traded food majors. This mix — rather than a few dominant corporations — is the defining structural feature.

3. How big it is

Federal statistics for NAICS 311423 (U.S.):

Derived from the above: roughly $31 million of receipts per establishment and about $54,000 of payroll per employee — a mid-sized, real-plant manufacturing industry, not a cottage trade and not government-run. (Note: the CBP and Economic Census use different methodologies and reference periods, producing slightly different establishment, employee and payroll counts; both are authoritative federal sources.)

Undercount caveat. These figures understate the true economic footprint of food dehydration for two reasons. First, captive production: much drying happens inside vertically integrated companies — a cereal maker freeze-drying its own fruit, a soup or pet-food company drying vegetables, a potato company running a dehydration line — whose plants are classified to their primary product, not to 311423. Second, the freeze-dried candy micro-sector: since the 2023–2024 social-media boom, thousands of tiny home-based and e-commerce operators run consumer freeze-dryers costing a few thousand dollars; most fall below Census establishment thresholds or are coded to confectionery/retail. (Note: separately published market-research "market size" figures of $30+ billion are far larger than the federal $8.64 billion because they bundle imports, retail markups, and broader global product definitions; the federal number is U.S. manufacturers' receipts.[4])

4. The investable universe

There are few clean public plays and no U.S. large-cap dedicated to this code. The table separates the small public exposure from the private/cooperative owners that actually dominate.

Public companies (tickers/scale for the investable-universe context):

Diversified U.S. food majors — J.M. Smucker (SJM), General Mills (GIS), Kraft Heinz (KHC), plus private Nestlé and Unilever — carry dried-food lines inside far larger portfolios; they offer only indirect, heavily diluted exposure. TreeHouse Foods previously offered diversified public exposure to broths, powdered beverages and other shelf-stable mixes, but Investindustrial completed its acquisition in February 2026 at $2.9 billion of enterprise value, after which TreeHouse became private.[12]

Major private and cooperative owners (where the industry actually lives):

• Sun-Maid Growers of California — grower-owned cooperative; the world's largest raisin producer.[13]
• Sunsweet Growers — grower-owned cooperative; operates what it calls the world's largest dried-fruit plant (prunes).[14]
• Basic American Foods — described by a food-plant engineering firm as the largest U.S. producer of dehydrated potato products.[15] Idahoan Foods and Idaho Pacific Holdings are additional private manufacturers dominating dehydrated potato (flakes, granules, dices) for foodservice, retail and the military.[16]
• OFD Foods (Oregon Freeze Dry) — private; its Mountain House brand holds roughly 70% of the freeze-dried camping-meal market; acquired by Arbor Investments in 2021.[17][18]
• Thrive Freeze Dry — Mubadala-backed contract manufacturer spanning bulk ingredients, probiotics, complete meals and consumer products, with multiple U.S. plants.[19]
• Van Drunen Farms / FutureCeuticals — large private, family-owned freeze-dried and drum-dried ingredient supplier.[20]
• Döhler Dry Ingredient Solutions, National Raisin Co., Silva International, Seawind Foods — additional private players across ingredients and branded products.[21]

5. How the money works

Owners make money the way manufacturers do — by buying a cheap, water-heavy raw crop and selling a concentrated, shelf-stable product for more than the cost of the crop plus the energy, labor and packaging to dry it. The metrics that matter are manufacturing metrics, not restaurant or real-estate ones.

• Yield and concentration ratio. Because fresh produce is ~80–90% water, finished product weighs a fraction of the input — often a 5:1 to 10:1 raw-to-finished ratio. Controlling shrink and waste (how many salable pounds you get per ton of crop) is central to margin.
• Input costs — the raw crop is the biggest line. Potato, onion, garlic, grape (raisin), plum (prune), tomato and fruit prices swing with weather and harvest. Much ingredient volume is sold on annual contracts to food manufacturers, so cost pass-through is imperfect: when crop prices spike faster than contracts reset, margins compress. USDA notes that processing contract prices show relatively limited year-to-year volatility compared with fresh-potato prices.[3]
• Energy and capacity utilization. Drying is energy-intensive, and freeze-drying (lyophilization) is the extreme — a vacuum/sublimation batch cycle running many hours to a couple of days, on expensive, capital-heavy equipment. As with any capital-intensive plant, fixed costs are spread over volume, so running the dryers full (high utilization) is how you earn a return; energy price spikes hit hardest here.
• Margins in practice. BranchOut Food provides a useful public-company example: in 2025 it generated $13.7 million of revenue and $2.0 million of gross profit, a 14.8% GAAP gross margin, while operating below normalized utilization. It identified agricultural materials, packaging, labor, freight, product mix, uptime and yield as the principal margin variables.[10] Reliable industry-wide margin data are not available; Census "total operating expenses" are not equivalent to public-company cost structures.
• Industry pricing. Selling prices rose sharply during the food-inflation cycle but have recently been comparatively flat. The BLS producer price index for NAICS 311423 was 300.1 in May 2025 and 293.4 in March 2026 (December 1982 = 100).[22][23]
• Two profit models.
• Commodity ingredient supply (dried onion/garlic/potato/vegetable sold to processors and foodservice): thin margins won on scale, reliability, contracts and food-safety track record.
• Branded/specialty (Sun-Maid raisins, Mountain House meals, freeze-dried snacks and pet treats): higher margins won on brand, shelf placement and channel.
• Cooperatives distribute differently. In grower-owned co-ops (Sun-Maid, Sunsweet), "profit" flows back to member-farmers as crop payments rather than to outside shareholders — so you can't buy equity; you join as a grower.[13][14]
• Barriers to entry are uneven. Ingredient dehydration is capital-heavy and consolidative; the consumer freeze-dried-candy end has near-zero barriers (a countertop freeze-dryer), which invites oversupply and price collapse (see Sow Good, sections 4 and 9).

6. What drives demand

• Shelf stability and food security — long shelf life without refrigeration underpins emergency-preparedness/prepping stockpiles, military rations, and disaster-relief supply.
• Outdoor recreation — camping and backpacking meals (Mountain House). Market researchers tie a jump in freeze-dried meal demand to the tens of millions of Americans who camp and hike annually.[24]
• Health-forward, clean-label snacking — freeze-dried fruit and vegetable snacks with no added sugar and strong nutrient retention; U.S. retail sales of freeze-dried snacks have grown at double-digit rates in market-research estimates.[24]
• Pet food and treats — freeze-dried raw pet food and single-ingredient treats are among the fastest-growing end uses.[24]
• Ingredient pull from packaged food — dried onion, garlic, potato, vegetable and fruit go into soups, sauces, seasoning blends, cereals, bakery and ready meals.
• Potato processing specifically. USDA reports that processing represented an average 70% of U.S. potato sales volume over the latest three seasons; within potato processing, dehydrated products averaged 15% of volume over the preceding five marketing years. For the 2024 crop, dehydrators used 42.6 million hundredweight of raw potatoes, down by less than 1% year over year — illustrating the category's maturity rather than a simple high-growth narrative.[3][25]
• Exports — the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported double-digit year-over-year growth in dehydrated onion, garlic and potato exports, driven by demand from Mexican, Japanese and Korean food manufacturers.[26]
• Novelty/social media — the freeze-dried candy trend drove a sharp 2023–2024 demand spike, since cooling (see risks).[27]

7. Regulation

• FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) is the primary regulator for fruit/vegetable-based dried foods. Under the FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) Preventive Controls for Human Food rule, facilities must maintain a written food-safety plan with hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls.[28]
• Low-water-activity (aw) safety. Dried foods sit below aw 0.60, where Salmonella cannot grow but can survive for long periods; low-moisture foods have been tied to recalls and outbreaks, so water-activity control is the critical control point. CDC research confirms Salmonella becomes more heat-resistant as water activity falls, and Listeria can enter ready-to-eat products after processing.[29][30]
• Recent recall example. A 2025 recall of Döhler Dry Ingredient Solutions freeze-dried fruit (distributed under the Member's Mark private label) for potential Listeria contamination illustrates that shelf stability is not equivalent to pathogen safety.[31]
• Sulfites. Many light-colored dried fruits (apricots, golden raisins) are treated with sulfur dioxide/sulfites to preserve color; FDA requires sulfite labeling above 10 parts per million because of sensitivity in some asthmatics.[30]
• Food Traceability List. Foods on the FDA Food Traceability List will require additional lot-level records under FSMA; Congress has directed FDA not to enforce that rule before July 20, 2028.[32]
• USDA jurisdiction and marketing orders. Products containing meat/poultry (some meal kits, soup mixes) fall under USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service; USDA also administers commodity grade standards and marketing orders — historically including the California raisin reserve program that reached the U.S. Supreme Court (Horne v. Department of Agriculture, 2015). Organic claims run through USDA's National Organic Program.
• Workplace safety. BLS reported a 2022 total-recordable injury and illness incidence rate of 4.4 cases per 100 full-time-equivalent workers for NAICS 311423. Hot surfaces, conveyors, lifting, sanitation chemicals and combustible food dust are practical plant risks.[33]
• Trade policy. Import competition (notably Chinese dehydrated garlic and vegetables) and antidumping duties make tariff policy a live variable for both ingredient buyers and domestic producers.[26]

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

At the whole-industry level this is fragmented and unconcentrated. Federal concentration data (2022) put the top-4 firms at 33.3% of revenue, top-8 at 47.6%, top-20 at 70.2% and top-50 at 86.9%, with a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) of 478.2 — well below the ~1,500 threshold antitrust agencies treat as concentrated.[4][34]

But that average masks tight concentration inside sub-segments: dehydrated onion/garlic is close to a duopoly (Olam/ofi and Sensient as the two leaders); dehydrated potato is a handful of private firms; raisins and prunes are cooperative-dominated; and camping freeze-dried meals are led by one brand (Mountain House at ~70%).[8][16][17]

Consolidation is active and two-directional. On the ingredient side, capital intensity (freeze/spray/drum dryers) favors scale, drawing private equity and strategic buyers — for example, Mubadala-backed Thrive Freeze Dry expanding in freeze-dried fruit, Arbor Investments acquiring Oregon Freeze Dry (Mountain House) in 2021, Japan's Nichirei owning Chaucer Foods, and Investindustrial taking TreeHouse Foods private in 2026.[12][18][19][35] Large confectioners have moved into freeze-dried candy (Mars launched Skittles Pop'd and M&M's Pop'd).[36] At the consumer freeze-dried-candy end, by contrast, a flood of micro-entrants after the 2023–2024 boom drove oversupply and a shakeout rather than consolidation.[27]

9. Risks

• Crop price and weather. Concentrated California/Pacific-Northwest supply (raisins, prunes, garlic, onions, tomatoes, potatoes) exposes producers to drought, water availability and wildfire; a bad harvest raises input costs that contracts may not immediately recover. A poor harvest can reduce usable solids and plant throughput even if the per-pound crop price is contractually fixed.
• Energy costs. Dehydration — and especially freeze-drying — is energy-hungry; energy spikes compress margins directly.
• Import competition and trade policy. Low-cost imported dehydrated vegetables and garlic pressure domestic ingredient margins; tariff changes cut both ways. The broader processed-vegetable market obtained 36.3% of 2025 availability from imports, though the share varied widely by commodity (this is not a 311423-specific figure, as trade statistics classify products by tariff code rather than NAICS establishment).[3]
• Food-safety recalls. Salmonella in low-water-activity foods carries recall, liability and brand risk; the 2025 Döhler freeze-dried fruit recall demonstrates that shelf stability does not mean pathogen-free.[31]
• Fad/overcapacity risk. The freeze-dried candy collapse (Sow Good sold substantially all its manufacturing assets for $1.5 million in December 2025 after a sharp revenue deterioration) shows how a low-barrier consumer segment can overbuild and crater.[11][27]
• Customer concentration and private label. Ingredient suppliers lean on a few large packaged-food buyers and face private-label price pressure. BranchOut disclosed that three customers represented 96.8% of its 2025 revenue.[10]
• Substitution. Fresh, frozen and canned produce; concentrates and pastes; snack bars; conventional confectionery; frozen potato products; and alternative flavor or texture systems can all compete. Dehydration's logistics advantage is strongest where rehydration is acceptable and cold-chain avoidance matters; it is weaker where consumers prioritize fresh texture.
• Health/regulatory scrutiny. Sulfite labeling and rising attention to added sugar in dried fruit are ongoing pressures.

10. How to invest and the outlook

Public routes (thin, and mostly indirect). There is no U.S. large-cap pure-play. None of the available public filings provide a material, separately reported NAICS 311423 revenue or profit segment. The available options: Sensient Technologies (NYSE: SXT) for dehydrated-ingredient exposure (diluted inside a flavors/colors company); Lamb Weston (NYSE: LW) for potato (mostly frozen, small dehydrated slice); BranchOut Food (Nasdaq: BOF) as a speculative micro-cap with Peru-based production and a going-concern qualification; and foreign-listed Olam/ofi (SGX) and Nichirei (TSE). Sow Good (Nasdaq: SOWG) is no longer a manufacturer. Broad packaged-food holdings (Smucker, General Mills, Kraft Heinz, or a packaged-food ETF) give only faint, blended exposure.

Private routes (where the real ownership is). Private equity buyouts and build-ups of ingredient dehydrators; direct purchase of family-owned manufacturers; venture/growth equity in branded freeze-dried snack and pet-treat companies; or building/buying a freeze-dry contract manufacturer. Arbor's 2021 acquisition of Oregon Freeze Dry and Investindustrial's 2026 TreeHouse take-private are representative transactions.[12][18] Grower cooperatives (Sun-Maid, Sunsweet) are member-owned — you participate by farming the crop, not by buying shares; their ownership interests generally are not investable securities available to ordinary financial investors.[13][14]

Key diligence variables in a private transaction: contracted crop supply, customer concentration and contract terms, usable dryer capacity (not nameplate capacity), energy consumption, product yield, validated pathogen controls, recall history, wastewater obligations, maintenance capex, packaging capability, and the share of revenue that is branded or specification-protected rather than commodity-priced.

Near-term drivers (forward-looking judgments). The healthier, more defensible growth appears to be in freeze-dried snacks, pet food and clean-label ingredients, plus emergency-preparedness demand and export pull for dehydrated onion/garlic/potato. Energy prices and California water/climate are the key swing factors on cost. A continued shakeout and consolidation in freeze-dried candy looks likely after the 2024 boom. Net: a slow-growing, defensive, commodity-processing industry with pockets of faster branded growth — attractive to private buyers seeking cash-generative manufacturers, but offering public investors little direct, undiluted access.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau / NAICS Association, "NAICS Code 311423 — Dried and Dehydrated Food Manufacturing" (2022 definition and cross-references). https://www.naics.com/naics-code-description/?code=311423
2. USDA ARS, research on drying economics and USDA FSIS on freeze-drying and packaging shelf stability. https://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publication/?seqNo115=190682; https://ask.fsis.usda.gov/article/Does-freeze-drying-make-food-shelf-stable
3. USDA ERS, Vegetables and Pulses Outlook (April 2026), pp. 17–21 (potato processing volumes, import shares, contract price volatility). https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/20874/vgs-378.pdf?v=90425
4. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, NAICS 311423 (receipts ~$8.64B; firms 239; establishments 282; employees 17,245; payroll ~$957.4M; CR4 33.3%, CR8 47.6%, CR20 70.2%, CR50 86.9%; HHI 478.2). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
5. U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Integrated Economic Survey, NAICS 311423 (2023 sales ~$9.21B). https://data.census.gov/table/AIESBASICTIMESERIES.AIES31BASIC01
6. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, NAICS 311423 (establishments 276; employees 17,886; annual payroll ~$963.8M; Q1 payroll ~$244.0M), 2023. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
7. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Size Standards (NAICS 311423 = 750 employees), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
8. Sensient Technologies Corporation, SEC filings and investor releases (Agricultural/Natural Ingredients; #2 U.S. dehydrated onion and garlic producer), 2025. https://investor.sensient.com/
9. Lamb Weston Holdings, "Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results" (net sales $6.45B), July 2025. https://news.lambweston.com/news-releases/news-release-details/lamb-weston-reports-fiscal-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2025
10. BranchOut Food Inc., 2025 Form 10-K (revenue $13.7M, gross margin 14.8%, customer concentration 96.8%, going-concern qualification). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1962481/000149315226014040/form10-k.htm
11. Sow Good Inc., 2025 Form 10-K (sold manufacturing assets for $1.5M, Dec. 2025). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1490161/000119312526133385/sowg-20251231.htm
12. TreeHouse Foods, "Investindustrial Completes Acquisition of TreeHouse Foods" ($2.9B EV, Feb. 2026). https://www.treehousefoods.com/news-and-media/press-release-details/2026/Investindustrial-Completes-Acquisition-of-TreeHouse-Foods/default.aspx
13. Sun-Maid Growers of California (world's largest raisin producer; grower cooperative). https://www.sunmaid.com/about-us/grower-story/
14. Sunsweet Growers (agricultural marketing cooperative; largest dried-fruit plant). https://www.ccof.org/directory-member/sunsweet-growers-inc-and-dba-disruptive-beverages-inc/
15. Dennis Group, project profile for Basic American Foods ("largest U.S. producer of dehydrated potato products"). https://dennisgroup.com/project/basic-american-foods/
16. PotatoPro / Idaho Potato Commission, dehydrated potato processors (Basic American Foods, Idahoan, Idaho Pacific). https://www.potatopro.com/product-types/dehydrated-potato-products/united-states; https://idahopotato.com/directory/processors/basic-american-foods
17. OFD Foods (Oregon Freeze Dry) / Mountain House, "The History of Mountain House" (~70% of camping freeze-dried market). https://mountainhouse.com/blogs/general/history-mountain-house
18. Arbor Investments, "Arbor Investments Announces Acquisition of … Oregon Freeze Dry" (2021). https://www.arborpic.com/arbor-investments-announces-acquisition-of-largest-north-american-freeze-dryer-oregon-freeze-dry/
19. Thrive Freeze Dry, company site (PE-backed contract manufacturer, multiple U.S. plants). https://www.thrivefoods.com/about-us/
20. Van Drunen Farms, company site (freeze-dried, drum-dried and frozen specialty products). https://www.vandrunenfarms.com/
21. Expert Market Research / Mordor Intelligence, "Dehydrated Fruits and Vegetables — Top Manufacturers," 2025. https://www.expertmarketresearch.com/reports/dehydrated-fruits-and-vegetables-market/companies
22. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Index detailed report (May 2025; NAICS 311423 PPI 300.1). https://www.bls.gov/ppi/detailed-report/ppi-detailed-report-may-2025.pdf
23. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Index detailed report (March 2026; NAICS 311423 PPI 293.4). https://www.bls.gov/web/ppi/ppi_dr.pdf
24. Precedence Research / Future Market Insights / Mordor Intelligence, "Freeze-Dried Food Market" size and growth estimates, 2025. https://www.precedenceresearch.com/freeze-dried-food-market
25. USDA NASS, 2024 Potatoes Summary (dehydrator usage 42.6M cwt). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/pots0925.pdf
26. U.S. Department of Agriculture, dehydrated onion/garlic/potato export data (double-digit YoY growth; Mexico, Japan, Korea), 2025, reported via SkyQuest "Dehydrated Potato Market." https://www.skyquestt.com/report/dehydrated-potato-market/market-news
27. ConfectioneryNews / FoodNavigator-USA, "Freeze-dried candy trend … but not everyone's winning," 2025–2026. https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2026/01/20/mms-ferrara-jump-in-as-freeze-dried-candy-booms/
28. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "FSMA Final Rule for Preventive Controls for Human Food," 2015 (current). https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/fsma-final-rule-preventive-controls-human-food
29. CDC, review of low-moisture food outbreaks and Salmonella heat resistance. https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/164639/cdc_164639_DS1.pdf
30. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Hazard Analysis and Risk-Based Preventive Controls guidance — low-water-activity foods, sulfited dried fruit and water-activity control. https://www.fda.gov/media/99572/download; https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/guidance-industry-measures-address-risk-contamination-salmonella-species-food-containing-peanut
31. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Döhler Dry Ingredient Solutions freeze-dried fruit recall (Listeria, 2025). https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/doehler-dry-ingredient-solutions-llc-recalls-members-mark-freeze-dried-fruit-variety-pack-listeria
32. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FSMA Food Traceability Rule status (enforcement delayed to July 20, 2028). https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/fsma-final-rule-requirements-additional-traceability-records-certain-foods
33. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, injury and illness rates by industry, 2022 (NAICS 311423: 4.4 per 100 FTE). https://www.bls.gov/iif/nonfatal-injuries-and-illnesses-tables/table-1-injury-and-illness-rates-by-industry-2022-national.htm
34. Iowa State University CARD, analysis of 2022 Economic Census concentration ratios (NAICS 311423: CR4 33.3%, HHI 478.2), February 2026. https://www.card.iastate.edu/files/publications/pdf/26PB51.pdf
35. Mordor Intelligence, "Dehydrated Food Market — Companies" (Thrive Freeze Dry/Mubadala; Nichirei/Chaucer Foods), 2025. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/dehydrated-food-market/companies
36. CSP Daily News, "Mars to Acquire Kellanova, Freeze-Dried Candy Sales Grow …" (Skittles/M&M's Pop'd launches), 2024. https://www.cspdailynews.com/snacks-candy/mars-acquire-kellanova-freeze-dried-candy-sales-grow-more-2024s-top-center-store