As of August 31, 2026, 55 people in 15 states are sick with Salmonella Agona or one of three strains of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli after eating alfalfa sprouts, four of them hospitalized, none dead, with illness onsets running May 31 through August 8. Until today the only company in this outbreak was Everything Sprouts, LLC of Minneapolis, which recalled its Calco and Everything Sprouts alfalfa on August 22. This afternoon FDA updated its advisory to say those sprouts are “one of the sources of illnesses” and “do not explain all the illnesses,” that at least one other grower sprouted the same lot of alfalfa seed, and that the seed supplier has not responded to FDA’s request to recall it.
FDA has moved this outbreak from one sprouter to one seed lot.
Eleven days ago I wrote that four organisms in one bag of sprouts is a seed signal, not a kitchen signal, because a leaking roof gives you whatever is in roof water and does not plausibly deliver Salmonella and three separate STEC serogroups into one product in five weeks. FDA’s August 31 update says its traceback “has identified at least one additional sprout grower who received and used the same lot of alfalfa sprout seeds under investigation in this outbreak from a common seed supplier,” and that the agency “is continuing to investigate contamination of the implicated alfalfa sprout seed.” That is the agency’s phrasing, not mine.
It also explains the map. Minnesota and Wisconsin hold 38 of the 55 cases, and Everything Sprouts shipped only to those two states. The other 17 sick people live in 13 states, ten of them with a single case, from Florida to Washington to New Hampshire. A second grower with a different distribution footprint is the simplest account of those 17, and FDA has now said the Everything Sprouts product cannot account for them. Whether the second grower sits in one of those 13 states is not something FDA has said.
The seed supplier told its customers to stop using the lot. FDA asked for something else, and the supplier has not answered.
According to FDA, the supplier “has instructed its customers not to use, grow, sell, transfer, or redistribute the implicated seed lot, and to return or dispose of any remaining seed.” That is a stock recovery letter. It reaches seed sitting in a sprouter’s warehouse. It does not reach the sprouts already grown from that seed and already sold.
FDA asked for both. The advisory says FDA “recommended that the common seed supplier voluntarily recall the implicated lot of alfalfa seeds and contact their downstream customers to initiate recalls of sprouts grown from the implicated seed lot.” Then FDA wrote the sentence that prompted this post: “At this time, the common seed supplier has not responded to FDA’s recall recommendation, has not sent a recall notice to downstream customers, and has not instructed the customers who received the implicated alfalfa sprout seed lot to initiate recalls.”
Three negatives. No response, no notice, no downstream recall. I will hold the line I held on August 21 about Everything Sprouts: “has not responded” is what FDA wrote, and it is not the same word as refused. Refusal is a finding under section 423 that only FDA can make. Silence is a fact, and it is the fact on the record tonight.
What a recall produces that a customer letter does not is the point I made when Everything Sprouts was in this exact posture ten days ago: a lot number, a distribution list, notification down the chain, an entry in FDA’s enforcement report, a press release. A seed supplier’s customer list is the list of every sprouter that grew this lot. Its customers’ customer lists are the list of every store and restaurant that sold those sprouts. Neither list exists in public today, and the second one cannot be assembled until the first one is.
The second grower is not named, and its sprouts have not been recalled.
FDA named Everything Sprouts on August 21, two days after its investigators walked into the plant and before the company had recalled anything. It has not named the seed supplier, and it has not named the second grower. The advisory’s consumer advice reads, in full, “Do not eat, sell, or serve recalled sprouts.” Nothing grown by the second grower has been recalled. A person in South Carolina or Washington who bought alfalfa sprouts this week has been told nothing she can act on, because the only brand names on the federal pagesbelong to a company that never shipped to her state.
I understand why an investigation holds a name while traceback is being confirmed. That reason ran out on August 31, when FDA itself published that the grower “received and used” the lot. The grower is identified. The seed is implicated. The public is the only party still in the dark.
FDA has been able to order this recall since 2011. Seed is food.
Section 423 of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, added by the Food Safety Modernization Act in 2011, lets FDA order a recall when there is a reasonable probability that a food is adulterated and that exposure to it will cause serious adverse health consequences or death. FDA’s own recall guidance lists alfalfa sprouts contaminated with Salmonella as its example of that risk. The agency has needed to issue a mandatory recall order once, in April 2018, against a kratom seller.
Seed for sprouting is not “covered produce” under the Produce Safety Rule, and a supplier might be tempted to read that as an exemption. FDA closed that door in 2022 when it issued its seed guidance: seed used for sprouting is food under the Act. Section 423 applies to food. The supplier also has its own duty under the Reportable Food Registry to report, within 24 hours, that it holds a food with a reasonable probability of causing serious harm, and that duty does not wait for a recall.
The statute’s steps are short. A written opportunity to recall voluntarily. If the firm does not, an order to cease distribution, with an informal hearing within two days. Then a recall order, which only the Commissioner can sign. Kyle Diamantas has been acting Commissioner since May. FDA’s seed guidance says contaminated seed has been identified as the likely source of most sprout outbreaks since the 1990s, and it describes a 2016 outbreak in which the entire seed lot was recalled. The investigators who found this common lot did their job. What happens next is not their decision.
The radish mix expansion now has a stated reason, and it shipped four days past the alfalfa recall.
Everything Sprouts expanded its recall on August 28 to Robust Radish Sprout Mix in 5-ounce cups, lots 223, 226, 230 and 233. The company’s notice gave no reason. FDA’s update does: “the potential for cross-contamination” from the recalled alfalfa. Lot 233 appears in no earlier notice. The radish mix was distributed from August 13 through August 26, which is four days after the company recalled its alfalfa on August 22. Food Poison Journal carries the lot numbers for all four products.
Here is where the outbreak stands on the last day of August. The seed is implicated, in FDA’s own words. A second grower used it and is unnamed. Its sprouts are unrecalled. The supplier has been asked for a recall by the agency that can order one, and has not answered. Every one of those sentences can change tomorrow with a recall notice, a name, or a signature. Fifty-five people, four of them in the hospital, are waiting on one of the three.