Saturday, October 3, 2026
This is the thirteenth Saturday column. Last Saturday’s edition ran under the headline A Raw Milk Cheese Labeled as Aged the Sixty Days the Rule Requires Made Thirteen People Sick; its point was that the recalls were arriving after the outbreaks were already over. This week the government closed the books. On Friday FDA ended its investigation of the largest Cyclospora outbreak ever recorded in this country, 12,883 people sick, and said for the first time where it found the parasite: in a tank of wastewater leaving the Taylor Farms de Mexico plant, and in a drainage ditch at a grower that supplied it. The same afternoon it ended the jalapeño Salmonella outbreak at 488 sick, with a grower traced to a Mexican state and no route of contamination traced at all. The day before, CDC closed the hepatitis A outbreak in frozen blood clams at 37 sick and 30 hospitalized, with the importer never named. Three files, 13,408 people, and not one closing page that says how the pathogen got into the food. The files that stayed open did the opposite of closing. The joint FDA–USDA E. coli investigation went from 25 sick to 38 with no food named, a new Listeria file opened at 11, and CDC’s alfalfa sprout count went from 55 to 76 while FDA’s page for the same outbreak still says 55. Closed without a cause, open without a food.
FDA closed the iceberg lettuce investigation on Friday and, for the first time, said where it found the parasite. The closure page carries the final count, 12,883 confirmed ill, 570 hospitalized and two dead in 21 states, with the last illness beginning August 17, and two sentences the agency had not written before: one positive environmental sample came from a tank that held outgoing wastewater from the Taylor Farms de Mexico processing facility, and the second from a drainage ditch at an iceberg lettuce grower identified in traceback. No lettuce ever tested positive. Genotyping of both samples is complete, and the page does not say whether they match the people. FDA’s own conclusion is that there is not enough evidence to conclusively determine how contamination occurred. Taylor Farms told ABC News the grower is no longer in its supplier program and that the Mexico facility remains closed. I wrote Friday about what FDA found, wrote again after the New York Times put the finding in plain words about what the company has said and has not, and in Food Safety News this morning about what has to happen before the 2027 lettuce is planted. The one thing this week I will credit without qualification is that FDA also put ten commitments in writing for the 2027 growing season, from an outbreak investigation report to laboratory capacity in Mexico to standardized genotyping with CDC, and the Office of Produce Safety deserves the credit. Four other Cyclospora files on FDA’s table are still marked active with their outbreaks ended, 313 people and no food among them, and the season total CDC stopped updating weekly stands at 19,883. Fifteen congressional letters still have no published answer.
The jalapeño outbreak closed the same afternoon, with a grower traced to a state and a cause traced to nobody. FDA’s final page counts 488 sick in 34 states, 65 hospitalized and no deaths, onsets June 16 to August 26. Of 308 people interviewed, 281 ate at a Mexican-style restaurant, Chipotle and QDOBA among them. Traceback found a common grower in Sinaloa that supplies Coast Citrus Distributors; by the time inspectors arrived no jalapeños were left to sample, the environmental samples were negative, and the page says in one sentence that FDA was unable to determine a route or source of contamination. My post on the Salmonella Javiana close is up, and Phyllis Entis wrote up both closures side by side. CDC closed the week’s third file on Thursday: the hepatitis A outbreak in La Serranita frozen blood clams from Ecuador ended at 37 sick, 30 of them hospitalized, in four states, with the New Jersey importer and the New York dealer never named on any federal page. I wrote Monday about whether those clams were illegally imported; New Jersey says yes, and federal law makes it a harder question.
The Graziers raw milk cheese recall reached FDA’s recall page on Tuesday, five days after the company announced it, and it still has no lot codes. The notice lists eleven products, from eight-ounce squares of Monterey jack to 40-pound cheddar blocks, distributed nationwide, and says the investigation has not been narrowed to a specific lot, date code or production date; everything is recalled. The CDC and FDAcounts have not moved since September 25: 13 sick in nine states, eight hospitalized, three with hemolytic uremic syndrome, more than half of them five or younger, onsets July 7 to August 26. Phyllis Entis had it first as the second multistate raw milk cheese outbreak this year and the third since 2024. I wrote Thursday about why thirteen is a floor, why the HUS rate is so high, and the Listeria recall at the same plant thirteen months earlier. Marler Clark represents the family of a child who developed HUS after eating Graziers cheese, and families from last fall’s Twin Sisters Creamery outbreak. The draft citizen petition for a warning statement on raw milk cheese and completion of FDA’s 60-day-rule reevaluation is open for comment through Friday, October 9, and the twenty-five-year outbreak record behind it ran Monday. New York added a footnote Wednesday: Agriculture and Markets found Listeria in raw milk from Big Brook Farm in Oneida County, the farm’s second positive since 2024, and barred sales.
CDC’s alfalfa sprout count went from 55 to 76 on Thursday; FDA’s advisory for the same outbreak still says 55. CDC’s October 1 update adds 21 sick, two hospitalizations and a sixteenth state, Oregon. Onsets now run from May 31 to September 7, sixteen days after the August 22 recall; 64 people have E. coli, nine have Salmonella Agona and three have both, and CDC writes that recalled seed lot SAL2-24JB may be contaminated with multiple pathogens. FDA’s advisory is stamped September 24 and carries 55 sick in fifteen states, and its table row has not moved either. I put the seventy-six in context Thursday: 72 of them were already sick before the public was told anything. The seed kept finding new doors: Todd’s Seeds recalled again, 37,481 units of sprouting seed and mixes containing the lot, a recall that appears in FDA’s enforcement database and nowhere on its recall page. In the other sprout outbreak, EAK Distribution recalled HOME GROWN broccoli sprouting seed sold on Amazon nationwide after FDA found Salmonella in the seed; the same bulk lot went to Evergreen Fresh Sprouts, the grower in the 32-person broccoli sprout outbreak, which has not moved since September 24, Washington still at 24. That is 108 sick across the two sprout outbreaks, and the second time in six weeks that contaminated seed reached home sprouters, which is the argument for the sprout warning label petition, also open for comment through October 9. The twenty-five-year sprout record ran Tuesday.
Eleven open files on FDA’s outbreak table name no food, and together they carry 675 people.The table was re-stamped September 30. The joint FDA–USDA E. coli O157:H7 file, FDA #1421 and FSIS 2026-04, went from 25 sick to 38 in a week and FDA began collecting samples; the product line still reads Not Yet Identified. A new Listeria file, #1415, opened at 11 with traceback only, #1417 went from 40 to 44, and #1379 from 10 to 11, which puts 66 people in three files with Listeria and no food named. On Tuesday I wrote about two calls in twenty-four hours, both culture-confirmed E. coli, both told they are part of a multistate outbreak, both buyers of a meat-and-vegetable sandwich wrap from the same chain in different states; a wrap would explain why one outbreak carries two reference numbers. The firm’s epidemiologists have the records requests out, and I said what the count looked like the next morning and asked the agencies for states, onsets and whether a mixed product is under investigation. CDC’s dashboard, re-dated the same day, lists 33 active multistate investigations, 18 of them Salmonella, down from 38 the week before.
The frozen blueberry recall expanded a third time on Friday, eleven days after CDC declared that outbreak over. Frutas y Hortalizas del Sur of San Carlos, Chile, added Great Value Organic Blueberries and Organic Triple Berry Blend at Walmart in 30 states and Puerto Rico, and Trader Joe’s Organic Mixed Berry Blend in 26 states and the District of Columbia, with best-by dates that run to June 2028. CDC closed the E. coli O145:H28 outbreak September 21 at 17 sick and six hospitalized in Florida and Georgia, no deaths. A suit filed in Pinellas County Circuit Court alleges a Largo woman died June 20 after eating GreenWise blueberries bought at Publix, thirteen days before the first recall; nobody has said whether she is among the seventeen. My post on the expansion is on Food Poison Journal.
Phyllis Entis at eFoodAlert kept the ledger, and the items that matter this week are mostly about what the notices leave out. Gias Foods expanded its bettergoods Lemon Alfredo Fettuccine recall at Walmart to every lot on Thursday, Listeria found by Washington and Florida state sampling, best-by dates into September 2027, no illnesses; the two-lot recall was September 15. New York’s Agriculture and Markets announced a nationwide Listeria recall of Starfish Seafood Cold Smoked Seafood Trio from a Brooklyn distributor that appears on no FDA page (October 1). Coco G’s Snack Foods popcorn, recalled in May for Salmonella, was classified Class I in FDA’s enforcement report on September 29 and appears nowhere else (September 30). G.L. Mezzetta recalled one lot of peperoncini for a pest contaminant ten days after a consumer posted video of what appeared to be a mouse in the jar; the notice never says mouse, and WinCo pulled salsa bean dip trays in eight states that used it. I wrote about the notice that never says so and about thirteen recalls since 2009 where the contaminant was an animal. On the meat side, FSIS recalled 189 pounds of Colombian pork-crackling chips on Friday (October 2), and Star Meat Delivery denied using a fake USDA mark on 167,639 pounds of uninspected meat, saying establishment number 1363 was legitimately reserved for it during the application process; USDA answered that the company never completed the process, that the product surfaced at a South Carolina retailer, and that a retail list would be added to the notice. No FSIS public health alert was issued in September. FDA posted a warning letter to Middlefield Original Cheese Cooperative in Ohio on September 29, Listeria in 14 of 80 environmental swabs after two 2025 recalls; the letter is dated March 6, 207 days earlier.
The nominee to run FDA will not get a vote before the midterms, and the recall count became a campaign line. STAT reported that the Senate HELP Committee left town without scheduling a vote on Dr. Heidi Overton and does not return until November 9; she sat for her hearing September 24 and could not name the office that investigates outbreaks. FDA’s own account on X said the same week that 1,836 recalls in fiscal 2026 is among the lowest totals in a decade and warned readers off the fake news; CBS News and KFF Health News ran the numbers, and I explained Monday why recall counts are a lousy yardstick. Susan Mayne, who ran FDA’s food center for eight years, asked why FDA’s recruiting drive for thirty advisory committees includes no committee on food; the microbiological criteria committee was eliminated last year. House Democrats put their health care agenda on paper with sixteen food bills, one of them about a pathogen. A federal judge in San Francisco extended the pause on USDA’s relocation of about 2,600 employees, Beltsville’s Cyclospora researchers among them, to October 13. Annie Waldman at ProPublica told the story of two little girls, an unlicensed goat dairy and a cease-and-desist letter that let the milk keep selling as pet food; hats off, and the firm has filed suit for both families. And the firm is still hiring an associate and a paralegal.
That’s the week — three outbreaks closed with 13,408 people in them and not one page that says how the pathogen got into the food, eleven files open with 675 people and no food named, 108 sick across two sprout outbreaks with the seed still turning up in new bags, and a raw milk cheese that put three small children into kidney failure recalled nationwide with no lot codes. Two draft petitions are open for comment through Friday, October 9; read them and tell me what I got wrong. Check back next Saturday.
About Bill Marler
William “Bill” Marler has spent more than thirty years as a food safety lawyer and advocate—work that began with the 1993 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak and has never really stopped since. In the years that followed, he has represented victims in nearly every major foodborne illness outbreak in the United States. That case, and the movement it launched, is the subject of the book “Poisoned” and the Emmy Award–winning Netflix documentary of the same name. Bill’s work has been profiled in The New Yorker (“A Bug in the System”), the Seattle Times (“30 years after the deadly E. coli outbreak, a Seattle attorney still fights for food safety”), the Washington Post (“He helped make burgers safer. Now he’s fighting food poisoning again”), and many others.
Dozens of times a year, Bill speaks to industry, regulators, and universities across the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, China, and Australia about a simple idea: outbreaks are preventable. He has testified before Congress on the Food Safety Modernization Act and teaches food safety at institutions including the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He writes regularly about food litigation and food safety at Marler Blog, and in 2009 he founded Food Safety News, which he continues to publish.