Saturday, September 19, 2026
This is the eleventh Saturday column. Last Saturday’s edition ran under the headline CDC Closed the Largest Cyclospora Outbreak in American History at 12,883 Sick; its point was that closed is not the same as answered. This week the answers turned up in places nobody would think to look: FDA confirmed the sprout seed recall and left the supplier’s name in the Enforcement Report, Washington counted 27 sick in the broccoli sprout outbreak while CDC’s page says 22, FDA posted five closure summaries with a name blacked out, CDC said it will stop counting Cyclospora weekly, Abbott agreed to pay $385 million while admitting nothing, and a fourteenth congressional letter went out with no hearing behind it. The record exists. It is just not on the page where people look.
On Tuesday FDA said the seed supplier agreed to recall the alfalfa seed lot, and the advisory still does not say who the supplier is. FDA’s sprouts advisory, stamped September 15, says the seed supplier of Everything Sprouts, LLC agreed to recall the seed lot, sold to sprout growers and wholesale distributors in Puerto Rico and the United States and shipped to Canada, Mexico, Tahiti and Venezuela. The count is unchanged since September 1 at 55 sick, four hospitalized and no deaths in fifteen states, 46 E. coli, seven Salmonella Agona and two with both. The page names no supplier and no lot. Both have been public since September 10, when Phyllis Entis found them in FDA’s Enforcement Report: International Sprout Holdings Inc. of Cookeville, Tennessee, lot SAL2-24JB, 43,799 pounds, recall initiated August 23. I wrote about it that day; Food Safety News reported Wednesday that FDA has identified at least one more sprout grower that received the lot and has not named it either. On Tuesday Todd’s Seeds, an online sprouting-seed seller, recalled its alfalfa seed and mixes packed between January and May, named International Specialty Supply as the source, and cited a positive E. coli result on spent irrigation water tied to the lot. The name went to the record, not to the page the public reads.
Washington counted 27 people in the broccoli sprout outbreak on Thursday, and the federal pages still say 22. Washington’s Department of Health updated its page September 17 to 21 Washington cases, two hospitalized, in nine counties (King and Whatcom five each, Spokane three, Clark and Skagit two each, one each in Island, Snohomish, Walla Walla and Yakima), up from 16 on September 9, and says the outbreak now includes 27 people from four states. CDC’s page was last updated September 11 at 22 sick in Idaho, Montana, Utah and Washington; FDA’s advisory has not moved since September 9. Evergreen Fresh Sprouts of Moyie Springs, Idaho, recalled the sprouts September 4, the notice reached FDA’s page September 10, and the last use-by date was Wednesday. The two sprout outbreaks together stand at 82 sick by the states’ counts, and CDC says they do not appear to be related. I wrote about the broccoli outbreak the day it went federal and about both together two days later, when the number was 77.
Utah’s Bear River Health Department ruled the sprouts out and still has no source for 21 cases.The department’s September 1 release has not been updated; the Box Elder News Journal reported Wednesday that whole genome sequencing shows the Cache and Box Elder strain is not the Evergreen strain. Twenty-one cases in a district of about 200,000 people, three weeks without a date range, a serotype or a suspected food, and on Thursday I listed the twelve questions the department should answer in public.
The Happy Hens recall is eleven days old, the egg test results are five days overdue, and the count is 23. The California Department of Public Health’s September 11 release put the recall date at September 8 and the count at 23 sick and seven hospitalized, unchanged since September 4; nothing has been published since by the County, the state or FDA. The farm said August 31 that 4,000 eggs would be tested over two weeks, which ran out Monday; as of this morning the farm’s website carries no recall notice and no results, and the shop is taking egg orders for pickup in Ramona. I published the state’s list of 41 San Diego County locations that received the eggs. Vermont’s Leaping Bear Farm outbreak sits at 14. The UK Health Security Agency counted 586 confirmed Salmonella Enteritidis cases as of September 15 in three clusters likely linked to imported eggs, per Phyllis Entis’s Thursday ledger; I added up the American and European egg outbreaks on Thursday at more than 750 sick and two dead.
CDC will stop counting weekly at 19,883, and the fourteenth letter went to USDA. CDC’s case-data page, as of September 15, lists 19,883 confirmed domestic cases, 1,064 hospitalizations and two deaths in 49 states and the District of Columbia, with 9,765 still being sorted between domestic and travel and CDC aware of at least 6,594 more, and says CDC will stop updating it weekly because recent infections have significantly declined. Against the outbreak CDC closed at 12,883, that leaves exactly 7,000 confirmed cases with no food named. I laid out what each number counts last Saturday, from the states’ 33,548 and CDC’s 19,595 that day down to the one percent of infections any count catches. On Monday Representative Debbie Dingell and nine House colleagues wrote to Secretary Rollins asking why two of the Agricultural Research Service’s three Cyclospora research projects were shelved and the third is moving from Beltsville, Maryland to Iowa, with a two-week deadline. That is the fourteenth congressional letter of this outbreak; none has a published answer, and there is still no hearing. Helena Bottemiller Evich wrote Friday that Congress has stopped doing its job on food safety; the letters are the proof.
The produce industry spent the week talking about the outbreak, and I answered each piece separately. The California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement marked twenty years since the 2006 spinach outbreak on September 15; the International Fresh Produce Association closed its outbreak page September 14 saying the findings rested on epidemiology and traceback rather than a positive laboratory test, which Taylor Farms and its 2,000 negative samples should read next to FDA’s 2020 warning letter to Fresh Express; Donna Garren of FDA’s Office of Produce Safety said in Portland, Maine on Tuesday never to let a good crisis go to waste; and De Ann Davis at Western Growers wants FDA to say exactly which food is unsafe, where I agree and wrote out where we differ.
FDA’s files with no food named grew by six, and its five new closure summaries include one with the name blacked out. FDA’s CORE table, stamped September 16, moved the Salmonella Newport file from 109 to 111, the largest anonymous Cyclospora file from 231 to 234, and the Listeria file from nine to ten; the eight rows with no food named now carry 575 sick, up from the 569 I counted Wednesday, and CDC’s dashboard lists 38 active multistate investigations, up from 37. On Thursday FDA posted executive summaries for five closed 2026 files: cantaloupe names Ayco Farms of Pompano Beach, Florida, and the Guatemalan farms behind 70 cases in 25 states; requesón names Clover Hill Dairy of Mechanicsville, Maryland, behind 15 cases and one death, and a suspended Maryland permit; moringa says a supplier refused FDA access and redacts its name. I went through all five on Food Poison Journal; Food Safety News has the cantaloupe and requesón detail.
The recall ledger, kept as every week by Phyllis Entis at eFoodAlert. No FSIS recall or public health alert could be found for the week. Gias Foods recalled bettergoods Lemon Alfredo Fettuccine sold nationwide at Walmart on Tuesday after Washington and Florida state sampling found Listeria monocytogenes in two lots; no illnesses are reported. A Markys Caviar recall of Mon Sire brie for Listeria, distributed in Florida, appears only in the Enforcement Report. Danone recalled So Delicious salted caramel frozen dessert for small stones, Saratoga Potato Chips recalled J. Higgs bacon and cheddar chips for undeclared soy at Save A Lot stores in five states, GF Blends recalled gluten-free flour and mixes over 20 parts per million of gluten, and in Canada Alasko frozen raspberries were recalled for norovirus with illnesses reported across seven provinces. CDC touched two pages Thursday: hepatitis A in frozen black clams, still 37 sick and 30 hospitalized in four states, and pet turtles, now 20 sick in twelve states, half under five; I wrote about the turtles this morning. The frozen blueberry E. coli O145 file holds at 17 sick in Florida and Georgia while Publix’s recall page says there are no Publix recalls at this time.
Two agencies published rules, one company paid $385 million, and 77 congressional offices got a t-shirt. FDA released the 2026 Food Code Thursday, the biennial model behind more than a million restaurants and stores; written employee illness policies are now required. On Wednesday FDA published its survey of 438 grocery delis: 84 percent slipped on holding food safely and 62 percent on handwashing. USDA opened a $50 million Stand-Up program Wednesday for state meat and poultry inspection programs; thirty states run one now. On Monday the Justice Department announced that Abbott will pay $384,999,040 to settle False Claims Act allegations about its Sturgis, Michigan and Casa Grande, Arizona formula plants from 2018 through 2022, $348.7 million federal, $36.3 million to the states and $69 million to three whistleblowers, with the claims called allegations only. The rule still does not require the test. On Wednesday and Thursday t-shirts rolled into baby bottles went to 77 House and Senate committee offices with four unanswered letters asking for Clostridium botulinum testing in powdered infant formula; 52 babies were hospitalized in the ByHeart and Nara outbreaks. Firm business, briefly: three jobs are still open, an associate attorney with five or more years, a paralegal with ten or more years and a law student or LL.M. candidate, paid and remote, to cite-check four citizen petitions, resume and a short note to bmarler@marlerclark.com, no recruiters; in the Caruso case in Ohio we moved September 10 to drop Taco Bell and proceed against Taylor Farms alone; and Wednesday and Thursday I will be in Oslo giving two talks at the Aquatiq Food Forum.
That’s the week — a seed supplier named everywhere except on the advisory, a broccoli sprout count that is 27 in Olympia and 22 in Atlanta, an egg farm with a recall on the state’s page and none on its own, seven thousand confirmed Cyclospora cases with no food, and a fourteenth letter waiting on an answer. The record is there. 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.