I'll take your word for it that it's not a bug, but the behavior certainly seems strange to me. It's inconsistent between the shown chemical plants, where the only difference between them is location along a series of red wires.

What did you do?
I connected chemical plants in a daisy-chain fashion via red wires, with each having "Set Recipe" enabled and a recipe being supplied along that wire.

What happened?
Chemical plants after the first in the daisy chain did not set their recipe.

What did you expect to happen ...