Evergreen Fresh Sprouts, LLC of Moyie Springs, Idaho posted its broccoli sprout recall on FDA’s recall page on September 10, 2026, six days after the company says it stopped shipping. The notice covers 215 cases of six four-ounce bags each, delivered to three Washington distributors between August 24 and September 2. The outbreak behind it stood at 22 people sick with Salmonella Bovismorbificans in Washington, Montana, Idaho and Utah as of September 9, two of them hospitalized and none dead, with the first illness beginning July 7.
I wrote Wednesday about the twenty-two cases and the sample that produced the recall, and last week about the company’s two earlier outbreaks. This is about the piece of paper that arrived Thursday, and what is not on it.
The recall covers 1,290 bags from a ten-day shipping window.
The notice is specific where it chooses to be. Two hundred fifteen cases at six bags a case is 1,290 four-ounce zip-lock bags of broccoli sprouts, UPC 8 38796 00105 1, with use-by dates of September 7, 9, 11, 14 and 16. They went to three distributors in Washington between August 24 and September 2, and from there, the notice says, “may have been further distributed and sold in retail stores” in Idaho, Montana and Washington. The company says it has not produced or shipped broccoli sprouts since September 4 and is “conducting a root cause investigation.” The consumer line is 1-208-267-4258, Monday through Friday, “7am–2 pm GMT,” which I take to mean Pacific.
The first illness began seven weeks before the first recalled bag shipped.
FDA’s advisory puts illness onsets between July 7 and August 26. The earliest product in the recall left Moyie Springs on August 24. Forty-eight days separate the first illness from the first recalled bag. Every bag that made the 22 people sick was eaten in July and August; the recall reaches none of them, and cannot. That is not a criticism of the recall, which is the right thing to do with product still on shelves. It is the reason a recall notice that arrives six days after the fact, with the minimum FDA’s template asks for, is not the same thing as telling the public what happened.
The company credits a third-party lab. The states say the positive came from a sick person’s leftovers.
The notice says the recall began after “a sample of Broccoli Sprout with the Use By date 9/16/26 was tested positive for Salmonella by a third-party lab.” The agencies describe the event differently. FDA and CDC say Montana state officials identified a positive sample and whole genome sequencing showed it was the same strain of Salmonella making people sick. Washington’s Department of Health says “leftover broccoli sprouts collected from a person who became ill tested positive for the outbreak strain,” and Montana said on September 3 that Evergreen sprouts were being tested at the Montana Public Health Laboratory. The notice does not say the sample matched the outbreak strain, does not say a public health laboratory found it, and does not say whether its September 16 bag is the same sample the states describe. If it is a different one, Salmonellawas in the product the company shipped in its last week of production as well as in the sprouts a sick person had left over.
The notice says bags. The agencies say bags and clamshells, co-ops and restaurants.
Evergreen’s notice describes “6/4oz bags per case” and retail stores. CDC says the sprouts were “sold in plastic bags or clam shell containers” and “sold to food co-ops, restaurants, food service customers, and grocery stores” in the three states, and adds that product “may have been distributed further, reaching additional states.” Utah has a confirmed case and appears on nobody’s distribution list. A restaurant or co-op reading the company’s notice would not find itself in it. There is no retailer list, no distributor name, and no lot code beyond the use-by dates.
FDA’s table shows a traceback and a recall, no inspection and no sampling.
FDA’s CORE investigation table, updated September 10, added the outbreak as reference 1411: SalmonellaBovismorbificans, sprouts, traceback initiated, recall initiated. The columns for an on-site inspection and for FDA sample collection are blank. In the company’s two prior outbreaks, product samples never matched the patients; this time a state laboratory did the matching, and FDA’s own table so far shows no federal visit. The last inspection on the public record is a Form 483 FDA issued to Evergreen on June 6, 2014. Whether anyone has walked the Moyie Springs facility since this outbreak was recognized, the record does not say.
This is Evergreen’s third outbreak, and the notice does not say so.
Twenty-five people in five states were sickened with Salmonella Enteritidis from Evergreen alfalfa and spicy sprouts in 2011, and nineteen people in six states with E. coli O121 from its clover sprouts in 2014. With the 22 in this outbreak, that is 66 people over fifteen years from one sprouter. None of that history appears in the notice, and nothing requires it to. But a company on its third outbreak owes the people who sell and eat its product more than a template.
| Item | Company notice, Sept. 10 | FDA and CDC, current as of Sept. 9 |
| Product | Broccoli sprouts, 4-oz zip-lock bags, 215 cases (1,290 bags), UPC 8 38796 00105 1 | Broccoli sprouts in plastic bags or clamshell containers |
| Use-by dates | 9/7, 9/9, 9/11, 9/14, 9/16 | Same |
| Where sold | Three Washington distributors, shipped 8/24–9/2; may have reached retail in ID, MT, WA | Food co-ops, restaurants, food service and grocery in ID, MT, WA; may have gone further |
| Positive sample | A 9/16 use-by bag, tested by “a third-party lab” | Identified by Montana officials; WGS match to the outbreak strain; WA DOH: leftovers from a sick person |
| Illnesses | “22 cases as of 9/9/2026” | 22 sick, 2 hospitalized, 0 dead in ID, MT, UT, WA; onsets 7/7–8/26 |
| Strain match stated | No | Yes |
Sources: FDA recall notice (Sept. 10, 2026); FDA advisory and CDC outbreak notice (both current as of Sept. 9, 2026); WA DOH outbreak page (updated Sept. 9, 2026). All downloaded Sept. 11, 2026. Check: 215 cases × 6 bags = 1,290 bags; July 7 to August 24 = 48 days; September 4 to September 10 = 6 days.
What a complete notice would have said.
It would have named the distributors and the retailers, so a co-op in Spokane or a restaurant in Missoula could check its invoices instead of its memory. It would have said the positive sample matched the outbreak strain by whole genome sequencing, and who found it. It would have named the seed lot and said whether other sprouters got it, because in the alfalfa outbreak running at the same time the seed supplier turned out to be the story. And it would have gone up on September 4, the day the company stopped shipping, not September 10, when the earliest bag in it was three days past its use-by date and the last was six days from it. The use-by dates in this recall run about two weeks past the ship dates. A notice that takes six days has spent nearly half of that.
Which Evergreen broccoli sprouts are recalled? Four-ounce plastic bags of Evergreen Fresh Sprouts broccoli sprouts, UPC 8 38796 00105 1, with use-by dates of September 7, 9, 11, 14 or 16, 2026; CDC also lists clamshell containers with the same dates. Throw them out or return them, and wash anything they touched.
What if I ate Evergreen broccoli sprouts and feel sick? Salmonella symptoms usually start six hours to six days after eating: diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps. See a doctor for a fever over 102°F, bloody diarrhea, diarrhea lasting more than three days that is not improving, or signs of dehydration, and mention the sprouts so a stool sample can be tested.
Where were the sprouts sold? Grocery stores, food co-ops, restaurants and food service customers in Washington, Idaho and Montana; one Utah resident is sick, and FDA says the product may have gone further.
Twenty-two people, two in the hospital, a state laboratory that found the strain in a bag, and a notice that took six days and names nobody. Sixteen of the sick are in Washington, across eight counties. The recall protects the people who have not bought the sprouts yet. The people who already did deserve the rest of the story.