I have been suing companies that poison people since 1993. I started with Jack in the Box. Four kids died. Hundreds more got sick. I am still at it more than thirty years later.

So, when somebody hands Congress a to-do list on food, I read it with one question in mind: will this keep people out of my office?

On Monday, Sarah Sorscher, Director of Regulatory Affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, put out exactly that kind of list. Her piece, How the next Congress can fix our broken food system, lays out seven things the 120th Congress can do starting in January. Restore SNAP. Feed kids at school. Bring grocery prices down. Take on harmful processed foods. Fund and protect food safety programs. Push back on corporate influence. Do real oversight.

I agree with all seven. Frankly, it is the clearest, most useful thing I have read about food policy since the election.

Let me say this plainly: Sarah is one of the best food safety advocates in Washington. She is a lawyer with a public health degree. She serves on federal advisory committees, testifies before Congress, and actually reads the regulations, which is more than I can say for a lot of people who comment on them. When Sarah writes something, I pay attention, and so should Congress.

And CSPI has earned the right to be listened to. It has been the public’s food and health watchdog for more than fifty years. It does not take corporate money. It has been in the fight on food dyes, additives, labeling, and pathogens long before any of this was fashionable. I have stood next to CSPI on more issues than I can count, and I am proud to stand next to them again.

I want to spend most of my time on the parts of Sarah’s list I know best, the ones that show up on my desk as lawsuits.

Nobody campaigns for E. coli

CSPI makes a point that should not be controversial: food safety is a kitchen-table issue with long bipartisan support.

That has been true my entire career. Republicans and Democrats both eat. Their kids both drink formula and eat hamburgers and bagged salad. The Food Safety Modernization Act passed with votes from both parties after the peanut butter disaster of 2008 and 2009. Nobody runs for office promising more Salmonella.

And yet, as CSPI puts it, the people running Washington right now have taken us backward. I have watched it happen in real time. Here is what I mean.

We are going blind on purpose

In July 2025, CDC quietly cut FoodNet. FoodNet is the program that actively tracks foodborne infections in ten states covering roughly 16% of the country. It had been running since 1995. Required monitoring dropped from eight pathogens to two, Salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli.

Campylobacter, Cyclospora, Listeria, Shigella, Vibrio and Yersinia became optional.

Think about that list. Campylobacter alone caused an estimated 1.9 million foodborne illnesses in 2019, more than Salmonella or STEC. Listeria kills people. Vibrio kills people. Cyclospora outbreaks tied to produce show up every single summer.

I have clients right now with Campylobacter, Vibrio, Cyclospora and Listeria infections. Those are exactly the bugs we stopped actively counting.

CDC’s own talking points said funding had not kept pace. Frank Yiannas, who ran food safety at FDA and is nobody’s idea of a radical, warned that we will no longer know as accurately whether things are getting better or worse.

You cannot fix what you refuse to measure. CSPI is right that Congress has to restore FoodNet, and it should do it in the first appropriations bill it touches.

The chainsaw at FDA

In March 2025, HHS announced it would cut 3,500 people from FDA, about 20% of the agency. We were told inspectors were safe. Then we learned from reporting that about 170 people in FDA’s Office of Inspections and Investigations were let go.

The administration also scrapped two long-running expert panels, the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and the meat and poultry inspection committee. Those were the scientists who told regulators what the data actually said.

This was on top of a system that was already behind. According to a 2025 GAO report cited by TIME, FDA last met its own FSMA mandate for domestic food facility inspections in 2018.

Experienced inspectors take years to train. You do not rebuild that bench with a press release. CSPI’s call to fund and protect USDA and FDA food safety programs is not a wish list item. It is the floor.

Chicken still makes people sick

In April 2025, USDA withdrew its proposed Salmonella framework for raw poultry, a plan that took years to build and would have set enforceable limits on the most dangerous Salmonella in chicken and turkey.

The numbers have not changed. CDC estimates Salmonella causes about 1.35 million infections and roughly 420 deaths a year. USDA itself estimates 125,000 of those come from chicken and 43,000 from turkey.

We know what works because we have done it before. After Jack in the Box, USDA declared E. coli O157:H7 an adulterant in ground beef in 1994. Related illnesses have since fallen by more than half.

That is why I keep pushing FSIS to treat dangerous Salmonella in raw poultry the same way. Congress does not need to wait for the agency. It can hold hearings, ask why a science-based rule was shelved, and put the question to the industry under oath.

Babies are not supposed to get botulism from formula

Here is the example that keeps me up at night.

Last year, families started bringing their infants to hospitals with botulism. The common thread was ByHeart Whole Nutrition powdered formula. By the time CDC declared the outbreak over, 48 infants had been counted, every one of them hospitalized. FDA said it was the first known botulism outbreak tied to infant formula anywhere in the world.

Then a second brand, Nara Organics, was tied to another infant botulism outbreak.

I represent families from both. I have sat with parents who watched their babies lose the ability to hold up their heads.

FDA eventually linked the ByHeart outbreak to an ingredient from a supplier but did not publicly name the supplier. That is a problem. Parents, retailers and other manufacturers deserve to know where contaminated ingredients came from. It is the same reason I have asked FDA to require public disclosure of firms tied to outbreaks and to publish recall consignee lists.

This is what “fund and protect food safety programs” means in the real world. It means the investigators, lab scientists and epidemiologists who figure out why babies are sick, and fast.

Close the GRAS loophole, for real

CSPI’s fourth point is about chemicals, and it is a good one.

Under the GRAS loophole, companies can self-certify that new food chemical uses are safe, in secret, without telling FDA or the public. In August, HHS rolled out a proposal and called it closing the loophole. CSPI’s Peter Lurie pointed out that the proposal still lets companies sell products before or while they notify FDA. There is still no premarket approval. CSPI has been fighting this loophole for decades, and even sued FDA over it in 2017. They have been right the whole time.

I have filed my own comments on GRAS. My view is simple. If you want to put a new chemical in food, show FDA the data first and wait for an answer. That is how drugs work. Congress can write that into law and stop relying on an agency proposal that may never be finalized.

Food security and food safety are the same fight

I am a food safety lawyer, not a nutrition lawyer. But CSPI is right to put SNAP and school meals at the top of the list.

The tax and spending law Congress passed in 2025, HR 1, cut SNAP by about $186 billion over ten years, according to CBO. CBO also estimated that tighter work requirements alone would leave about 2.4 million fewer people on the program. For the first time, states have to pick up a share of benefit costs, and their share of administrative costs jumps from 50% to 75%.

A family that cannot afford food does not get to be choosy about where it comes from. Safe food that nobody can afford is not much of a win. CSPI’s push to restore SNAP, expand GusNIP for fruits and vegetables, and pass Healthy School Meals for All belongs in the same conversation as inspections and surveillance.

Hearings are cheap, and they work

CSPI is honest about the politics. The new Congress cannot pass much without the President’s signature. But it has enormous power to investigate and expose.

I have seen what a good hearing can do. Congress hauled the peanut company’s owner in after the 2009 outbreak, and that helped push FSMA over the finish line. Oversight is not a consolation prize.

Here are questions I would like to hear asked under oath next year. Who decided to cut FoodNet, and what data did they use? How many FDA food inspections have not happened since the layoffs? Why was the Salmonella framework withdrawn after years of work? Why have we still not been told which supplier sent contaminated milk powder into infant formula?

And while they are at it, Congress should finally look hard at the fact that food safety is split among more than a dozen federal agencies. I have argued for a single food safety agency for years. A Congress serious about oversight will see the cracks this structure creates.

The other side’s case

To be fair, the administration and industry have answers. USDA said the Salmonella framework would have imposed significant financial and operational burdens without an effective, achievable approach. CDC said narrowing FoodNet lets staff prioritize core work on the two pathogens behind the most severe illness. Supporters of HR 1 argue work requirements and state cost-sharing make SNAP more accountable.

I have heard versions of these arguments my whole career. Cost is real. But so are the hospital bills, the lost workdays, and the kids on dialysis. I have spent three decades adding up what preventable foodborne illness costs. Prevention is cheaper.

The bottom line

Sarah and CSPI have handed the 120th Congress a road map, and they deserve real credit for it. It is practical. Most of it should not be partisan. And it lines up with what I see every week.

Restore FoodNet. Fund the people who inspect our food and investigate outbreaks. Set real standards for Salmonella in poultry. Close the GRAS loophole with premarket review. Tell the public which companies are tied to outbreaks. Feed people.

If you agree, call your members of Congress and tell them so. If they ask why, tell them a food safety lawyer would love to have fewer clients.

Thank you, Sarah, and thank you, CSPI. Keep it coming.

Sources

• Sarah Sorscher, CSPI, How the next Congress can fix our broken food system (Nov. 9, 2026)
• CSPI, Sarah Sorscher, JD, MPH (biography)
• CSPI, 50 years as your food and health watchdog
• KFF Health News via CSPI, Food safety finds a place among kitchen-table political issues (Sept. 28, 2026)
• Associated Press, CDC dramatically scales back program that tracks food poisoning infections (Aug. 27, 2025)
• Food Safety Magazine, CDC Slashes FoodNet Surveillance From Eight Foodborne Pathogens to Two(Aug. 26, 2025)
• Food Safety Magazine, Department News Bites, Oct./Nov. 2025
• House Oversight Democrats, Letter urging HHS to halt FDA staff purge (Apr. 8, 2025)
• Consumer Federation of America, Taking the Chainsaw to Food Safety (Apr. 3, 2025)
• TIME, Food Safety Was Slipping in the U.S. Then Came Mass Layoffs
• Food Safety Magazine, USDA Withdraws Proposed Regulatory Framework for Salmonella in Poultry(Apr. 24, 2025)
• FOX 13, USDA withdraws plan to limit salmonella levels in raw poultry
• The New Lede, USDA withdraws proposed rule meant to reduce Salmonella in poultry products (Apr. 2025)
• Reuters via Insurance Journal, CDC Declares ByHeart Infant Botulism Outbreak Over, Probe Continues(Feb. 27, 2026)
• Just Food, ByHeart botulism outbreak over but probe continues (Feb. 27, 2026)
• Food Safety Tech, FDA Calls on Infant Formula Industry to Better Safeguard Against Contaminants(July 2026)
• Peter Lurie, CSPI, RFK Jr. leaves GRAS loophole ajar (Aug. 10, 2026)
• FactCheck.org, HR 1 SNAP and Medicaid changes
• Roll Call, Farm bill coverage: SNAP cost-share provisions

I learned this morning, the way we learn most things now, from a LinkedIn post. Keith Warriner, a food science professor at the University of Guelph, wrote that Doug Powell had died over the weekend. Ben Chapman, Doug’s former student and his partner in barfblog for twenty years, confirmed it.

Keith’s post was short and exactly right. Doug, he wrote, “was a character, for sure.” He established the Food Safety Network at Guelph. He was among the first to put the idea of food safety culture in front of the people who run food companies. He will be missed.

Who he was

Doug Powell grew up in Brantford, Ontario, trained in molecular biology, worked as a journalist, and as a student at Guelph in the 1980s started an alternative campus newspaper because he did not like the official one. He earned his PhD in food science at Guelph in 1996, but by then he had already been running the Food Safety Network for three years. Beginning in 1993, FSnet, AgNet, AnimalNet and FFnet went out by email every day, before Google Alerts, before RSS, before Twitter. He pulled stories off the AP wire through CompuServe at a time when CDC’s MMWR could take months to arrive by mail. If you worked in food safety in the late 1990s, in industry, in government or at a university, FSnet was in your inbox before your coffee. After the Walkerton E. coli O157 drinking-water outbreak in 2000, which killed seven people and sickened more than 2,000, he served on an expert committee on how to warn the public when the water is not safe.

He wrote one book, and it holds up. In 1997 he and William Leiss, the Canadian risk-communication scholar, published Mad Cows and Mother’s Milk: The Perils of Poor Risk Communication with McGill-Queen’s University Press. The case studies were Britain’s mad cow fiasco, hamburger disease, meaning E. coli O157, the bug that brought me into this work, genetically engineered growth hormone in milk, silicone breast implants, dioxins and PCBs, and agricultural biotechnology. The lesson in every chapter was the same: institutions that will not tell the public what they know, and what they do not know, about a risk end up paying for it, in money and in trust. Paul Slovic, the risk-perception researcher, called it “the best book I have seen on risk communication.” It went to a second edition in 2004. Doug talked for years about writing another one and never got to it.

In 2005, on an airplane, he and Ben Chapman decided to start a blog. An undergraduate named Christian came up with the name, and Doug insisted it stay lowercase: barfblog. It was to be evidence-based opinion about the things that make people sick, with references, mixed in with hockey, music and whatever else was on Doug’s mind that morning. By the time he announced in March 2019 that he was stepping back, barfblog had published 15,287 posts, and Doug had written 13,070 of them. He worked that out as a goaltender’s save percentage of .8549, which he conceded would not be great in hockey, but this was something different.

Food safety culture

The phrase “food safety culture” is everywhere now. In 2011, when Doug, Casey Jacob and Ben Chapman published “Enhancing food safety culture to reduce rates of foodborne illness” in Food Control, it was not. Two years later came “Audits and inspections are never enough.” The argument in both was the one Doug had made in a 2009 interview with Food Safety News: there is no evidence that more inspection makes food safer, and plenty of evidence that food gets safer when the people inside a company take it seriously every day and can prove it. He had been pushing the industry to market food safety directly to consumers since the 2006 spinach outbreak. The 2011 paper has been cited hundreds of times and still is.

He practiced what he preached about communication. The barfblog infosheets, one page, plain language, often funny, in English, Spanish and French, were built to be taped up in restaurant kitchens, and he and his students put cameras in real kitchens to measure whether they changed what food handlers did.

Kansas and Brisbane

Doug moved to Kansas State University in 2006 as a professor of food safety and scientific director of the International Food Safety Network. When Amy Hubbell took a position at the University of Queensland, he followed her to Brisbane and kept teaching and publishing from the other side of the world. In 2013 K-State declined to renew his contract. His own headline for the news was that he had been fired for bad attendance. Eight years later, when every university on earth had gone to distance learning, he noted the irony and did not spare anyone the barb. He kept writing from his kitchen in Brisbane, where, as his byline put it, he shopped, cooked and fermented.

Doug and me

Doug and I quoted each other for years, not always approvingly. Two Doug-isms made it into this blog and into Food Safety News more than once. Ask anyone who works in food safety what one food they will not eat, and the answer is raw sprouts, always. And “stick it in,” his instruction to use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer rather than color, time or guesswork to decide when the chicken is done. He was immediately suspicious of anyone who said “trust me,” a category that included regulators, companies, celebrity chefs and, on occasion, lawyers. We did not always agree, and when we did not, he said so in print, which is what he did with everyone. That was Doug.

Stepping away

Doug wrote about his own health with the same bluntness he applied to everyone else’s. In the March 2019 post announcing he would step back, he disclosed that he had early-onset dementia and other health problems, and said someone else should be in charge. “I did my best, even when my best wasn’t good enough,” he wrote. Then, being Doug, he kept posting anyway, until the summer of 2021, when the posts stopped. He signed off that 2019 piece by describing the job as improving food safety one digital thermometer, one skipped serving of raw sprouts and one called-out piece of bad advice at a time. That is as good a summary of his career as anyone will write.

He held three passports, Canadian, American and Australian. He described himself as an OK goaltender in pickup hockey, taught kids to skate in Guelph and coached them in Brisbane, and raised five daughters who gave him grandchildren.

My heart goes out to Amy Hubbell, to the mothers of his daughters, to his five daughters and his grandchildren, and to Ben Chapman and the students Doug trained and bragged about. Food safety has one fewer honest voice this morning than it did last week.

Peace and love, Doug.

First, an apology.

In September and October I told you I would post seven citizen petitions for comment, take your edits, and file them. I posted them. You sent edits. I have not filed them.

Two reasons. The day job has been relentless this fall, between two infant formula botulism outbreaks, a chicken wrap outbreak, raw oysters, pumpkin patches and Cyclospora. And, you sent me more good thoughts and edits than I ever expected.

That second reason is the better one. Microbiologists, a law professor, a farm-animal advocacy group, Stop Foodborne Illness, and parents whose babies were on ventilators all read these drafts closely, and every one of them made the drafts better. Thank you. I mean it.

So here is the plan. I will file most, if not all, of them by the first week of December. Before I do, if you want another look at any one of them, email me at bmarler@marlerclark.com. Tell me which one, and I will send you the current draft.

Here is what they are, and why we need them.

Why petitions at all

A citizen petition is the most underused tool in food safety. Anyone can file one. It needs no vote, no sponsor and no committee. Under FDA’s rules the agency owes an answer within 180 days, which is a deadline no bill in Congress has.

An agency can still say no. But a denial with reasons can be challenged, and silence cannot. And every one of these petitions asks the agency to do something it has already said, in its own record, that it should do.

Each one is also paired with the legislation that would do the same thing if the agency will not. A new Congress arrives on January 3. I want it to find the bills already written.

1. Test infant formula for botulism

Fifty-two babies were hospitalized with infant botulism after drinking powdered formula: 48 in the ByHeart outbreak across seventeen states, and four more in the Nara outbreak. Whole genome sequencing tied them to one supply of milk powder. Every one was treated with an antitoxin that California prices at $69,300 a dose.

Federal rules require powdered formula to be tested for exactly two organisms, Cronobacter and Salmonella. Clostridium botulinum is not one of them.

The petition asks FDA to:

• add botulinum neurotoxin-producing clostridia to the finished-product testing table, with a sample large enough to find low-level contamination
• require testing of the milk powder and other dairy ingredients before they are used, because that is where the spores came in
• require notice to FDA within one business day of a positive
• finish validating the test method it presented in July
• require lot-level records tracing each ingredient back to the dryer and the farm

Stop Foodborne Illness, Consumer Reports, EWG and forty-four parents of twenty-three of those babies are co-petitioners so far.

The legislative version is H.R. 7867, with one sentence added to require testing of the dairy ingredient. The Senate already passed a narrower bill, S. 272, without objection in April. It has been sitting at the Speaker’s desk since May.

2. A company’s name is not a trade secret

FDA will not tell you the name of a company in an outbreak unless there is a recall. Its theory is that the name is “confidential commercial information.”

Here is what that looks like in practice. In October, FDA announced an E. coli outbreak linked to ready-to-eat chicken wraps. Fifty people were sick. The agency said the wraps had been “proactively removed” and named no brand, no maker and no state. The public learned the brand from a lawsuit. When FDA closed the outbreak, it said more detailed product information would not have given consumers an action they could take.

Tell that to the next family.

The petition asks FDA to write a rule saying the identity of a firm implicated in an outbreak is not confidential commercial information. That means where epidemiology implicates a food, and traceback or laboratory evidence identifies the firm as the source, the agency names it. It covers the whole chain, grower to retailer, and it applies whether or not anyone uses the word “recall.” The firm gets a day to correct factual errors.

It also asks the agency to start now, using authority it already has. It backs up the petition Stop Foodborne Illness filed in February. Check FDA’s own outbreak table any week and count how many investigations name no food at all.

3. Tell people where the recalled food went

Since 2008, USDA has published the list of stores that received recalled meat and poultry. FDA generally does not. California’s health department already publishes recall distribution lists down to the street address of each store.

The petition asks FDA to:

• publish the retail consignee list in every Class I food recall on the day the recall is announced, reaching restaurants, schools and hospitals
• classify every recall within ten days and publish how long it took
• say in writing that removing an outbreak food from the market is a recall, whatever the company calls it

The chicken wraps were “proactively removed,” never classified, and never listed.

4. Let FDA take a sample where the contamination started

In the 2018 Yuma romaine outbreak, the outbreak strain turned up in irrigation canal water running past a large cattle feedlot. FDA had no clear authority to walk onto the feedlot and take a sample. I see the same pattern in my own files over and over. The investigation follows the evidence to the field, the field sits next to the animals, and the investigation stops at a fence.

Congress has been asked to fix this in four Congresses without a single hearing. This petition does not wait. Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act lets FDA write rules to stop the spread of communicable disease, and the agency used it in 1975 to regulate pet turtles.

The petition asks for a narrow rule. If the Commissioner finds in writing that an animal feeding operation is implicated in a multistate outbreak, the operation must allow entry and sampling for a limited time. That is all. No seizure, no quarantine and no production records.

A law professor whose book on foodborne illness is the standard account marked it up. Others pointed out that it reaches poultry and egg operations too, not just cattle. They are right, and I am working that in.

5. Salmonella in raw poultry

In 1994, after Jack in the Box, USDA declared E. coli O157:H7 an adulterant in ground beef. It took my beef practice away, and it is the best thing that has happened to food safety in my lifetime. We have never done the same for Salmonella in chicken.

USDA did take one step. In 2024 it declared breaded stuffed chicken with Salmonella adulterated at 1 colony-forming unit per gram. Then it delayed the testing indefinitely. Consumer Reports has asked for the databehind that decision. USDA also withdrew its broader poultry framework in April 2025.

The petition to FSIS asks it to declare raw ground chicken and turkey and raw chicken parts with Salmonella at 1 CFU/g or more adulterated. In the alternative, it asks the agency to do so for the three serotypes FSIS itself says cause the most illness. Either way, it asks FSIS to start the breaded stuffed chicken testing it already announced, or publish a date. And if FSIS says no to all of that, it should at least require serotype reporting by plant.

It is deliberately narrower than the 2020 petition, because the record FSIS has built since then is a poultry record.

6. Put a warning label on raw sprouts

Since 1998, FDA has told children, older adults, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems not to eat raw sprouts. It has said so in press releases, consumer advice and outbreak notices, including two sprout outbreaks this fall. It has never said so on the package, where people actually decide.

The bacteria can be inside the seed, where washing cannot reach. The petition asks for a short, prescribed warning on packaged sprouts and at the point of sale, modeled on the juice warning FDA wrote in 1998 in 21 CFR 101.17. Sprouts treated to make them safe would be exempt.

I first asked FDA for this in 2003. A microbiologist who reads every outbreak notice, a restaurant culinary director and Stop Foodborne Illness all improved it.

7. A warning label on raw milk cheese, and the 60-day rule

Raw milk cannot cross state lines in a bottle. It can cross as cheese, on the strength of a 60-day aging rule written in the 1940s. In 2013, FDA and Health Canada published a risk assessment finding that raw milk cheese carries far more listeriosis risk per serving than pasteurized cheese, and FDA promised to reevaluate the 60-day rule. It never did.

Since then, four outbreaks in thirty-one months have come from cheese that followed the rule. Forty-three people got sick, seventeen were hospitalized, and six children had kidney failure.

The petition asks for:

• a prescribed warning on raw milk cheese, including cheese cut at the counter, imported and sold online
• the 60-day reevaluation, finished within a year
• validation, under the preventive controls rule, by cheesemakers who rely on aging

My firm represents children from two of those four outbreaks, and the petition says so. Weigh it accordingly.

What happens next

I will spend the rest of November working your edits in (my evening job). Then I will file them, most if not all by the first week of December, and post the docket numbers on this blog as each is assigned. Once a petition is filed, anyone can comment directly to the agency at regulations.gov, and I hope you will.

None of these asks is radical. Every one of them is something the agency has already said, somewhere in its own record, that it ought to do. There is no kill step for Cyclospora, and there is no kill step for an agency that will not act. Petitions are how we make them answer.

Sources

1. CDC, Infant Botulism Outbreak Linked to Powdered Infant Formula, November 2025
2. CDC, Investigation Update on Infant Botulism Outbreak, June 2026
3. 21 CFR 106.55, Controls to prevent adulteration from microorganisms
4. H.R. 7867, Infant Formula Safety Modernization Act of 2026 (Congress.gov)
5. S. 272, Protect Infant Formula from Contamination Act (Congress.gov)
6. HHS, First Major Update to Infant Formula Standards in Nearly 30 Years (Oct. 29, 2026)
7. Stop Foodborne Illness, citizen petition on company names as confidential commercial information (Feb. 2026)
8. FDA, Investigations of Foodborne Illness Outbreaks
9. FSIS, Risk Assessment of E. coli O157:H7 in Ground Beef
10. FSIS, Salmonella in Not-Ready-To-Eat Breaded Stuffed Chicken Products, final determination (Federal Register, May 1, 2024)
11. FSIS, Delayed Verification Sampling of NRTE Breaded Stuffed Chicken Products (Dec. 2025)
12. Food Safety Magazine, Consumer Reports to USDA: Release Validation Data on Salmonella Tests (June 2026)
13. FSIS, Salmonella Framework for Raw Poultry Products, withdrawal (Federal Register, Apr. 25, 2025)
14. 21 CFR 101.17, Food labeling warning, notice, and safe handling statements
15. Bill Marler, There is no kill step for Cyclospora (Food Safety News, July 2026)

I have been doing this since January 1993. A hamburger at Jack in the Box put me in the food safety business, and I have said for more than thirty years that I would like to be put out of it.

I am not out of it. I am busier than ever.

That is the problem, and it is why I spent this fall writing something I never expected to write: a working agenda for American food safety. I call it Project 2027. It is not a manifesto. It is a list of things that can be done, by people who already exist, with bills, dockets and deadlines attached.

What we lost in two years

Here is what happened while most of the country was looking the other way.

In April 2025, USDA withdrew its Salmonella framework for raw poultry after three years of work.

In July 2025, CDC cut FoodNet, the system that measures whether anything we do is working, from eight pathogens to two.

In September 2025, the Justice Department eliminated the Consumer Protection Branch, the people who prosecuted food crimes.

In November 2025, the law that ended the shutdown carried a rider that bars FDA from enforcing its own traceability rule before July 2028. The House bill for this year repeats the bar.

In December 2025, FSIS delayed indefinitely testing under its own 2024 determination that breaded stuffed chicken with Salmonella is adulterated. The standard is law. Nobody is checking for it. Consumer Reports asked for the data behind that decision in June. I am not aware of an answer.

Almost none of that took an act of Congress. It was done by notice, by budget line and by rider. Which means most of it can be undone the same way.

And then the bills came due

This summer the country ran the largest Cyclospora outbreak in its history. More than 18,000 laboratory-confirmed cases. That is only the people who got a stool test that found the parasite. There is no kill step for Cyclospora, and we had stopped measuring the trend a year earlier.

Fifty-two babies were hospitalized with botulism after drinking powdered infant formula: 48 in the ByHeart outbreak and four more in the Nara outbreak. Whole genome sequencing tied them to one supply of milk powder. Federal rules still require formula to be tested for exactly two organisms, and Clostridium botulinum is not one of them.

In October, fifty people got sick from E. coli in ready-to-eat chicken wraps. FDA said the product had been “proactively removed.” It named no brand, no maker and no state. The public learned the brand from a lawsuit. When the agency closed the file, it said more detailed information “would not have provided consumers with an action they could take.” Check FDA’s own outbreak table on any given week and count how many investigations name no food at all.

USDA’s economists put the cost of foodborne illness at $74.7 billion a year. Salmonella alone is about $17 billion of it. Deaths are 56 percent of the cost, and long-term health problems are another 31 percent. None of it buys anybody a new kidney.

This is not only about bugs

I have spent my career on bacteria and viruses. My paper shows it. But I want to say something plainly that the first draft did not say well enough.

Chronic disease is not somebody else’s fight.

Ninety percent of the nation’s health care spending goes to people with chronic and mental health conditions. Obesity alone costs the health system nearly $173 billion a year. The foodborne number is real, and it is a rounding error next to that.

The two halves of this community, the people who fight pathogens and the people who fight diet-related disease, have treated each other as separate worlds for too long. We want the same things more often than we admit. Honest labels. Real review of what goes into food before it is sold. School meals that are both safe and nourishing. States that keep the right to protect their own people.

That is why Project 2027 now treats chronic disease at the same weight as the pathogen items, in the same signature block and the same hearing requests. And it gives the chronic side its own first item.

David Kessler petitioned FDA in August 2025 (docket FDA-2025-P-3071). The statutory clock ran out long ago. FDA sent a procedural interim response in February. The Secretary then said on national television that the agency would act. It has not.

The ask is one letter to FDA and to OMB: release the response. Nourish Science has committed to sign it. EWG is willing. I will draft it before the end of the year. It costs the government nothing, and it is the one place in the whole agenda where both halves of this community are asking the same office for the same thing.

What Project 2027 is

The first draft went out in September to about thirty people: consumer groups, former agency heads, state regulators, industry food safety people, law professors and scientists. It came back with dozens of comments and more than 180 separate points.

Some of the best came from people I fight in court. A produce industry veteran sent twenty-six comments and offered to do the research herself. A former director of FDA’s food center corrected me on what the agency had already done, and she was right. A state regulator with fifty years in the work reminded me that most food safety in this country happens at the state and local level, not in Washington.

They also told me thirty-plus items is too many. I heard them. The next draft will be shorter.

What survives are things with a vehicle and somebody already pushing them:

• Keep the traceability rider out of the next spending bill.
• Test infant formula, and the milk powder it is made from, for the organism that paralyzed these babies.
• Restore surveillance, laboratories first.
• Name the companies in outbreaks, recall or no recall.
• Publish recall consignee lists the day a recall is announced.
• Let FDA take samples at the animal operation next to the field when an outbreak points there.
• Bring back produce testing, this time in statute.
• Release the response to the Kessler petition.

Bring back the MDP

That produce testing item deserves its own paragraph.

From 2001 to 2012, USDA’s Microbiological Data Program tested 10,000 to 15,000 produce samples a year. That was roughly 80 percent of all federal produce testing, for about $4.5 million a year.

In 2012 it found Listeria in cantaloupe from Burch Farms. The recall reached nearly 189,000 melons, and nobody was reported sick. That was eleven months after Listeria in Jensen Farms cantaloupe killed 33 people. I represented those families.

Then it was shut down after years of produce industry lobbying. The scientists who analyzed its data wrote in 2016 that the monitoring had to continue somewhere. It has not.

I have been asking to bring it back since 2024. Now there is a drafted bill, the Produce Pathogen Surveillance Act. It has permanent authorization, whole genome sequencing of every positive, and no more “blind” sampling. Firms behind confirmed positives get named. It was a Bush-era program, and it should not be a partisan one now.

Seven petitions you can comment on now

I have also drafted seven citizen petitions from the agenda, six to FDA and one to FSIS. None has been filed. All are still open for comment.

They cover:

• botulism testing in formula
• naming firms in outbreaks, which backs up Stop Foodborne Illness’s own petition
• consignee lists and prompt recall classification
• sampling at implicated animal operations
• Salmonella in raw poultry
• warning labels on raw sprouts and on raw milk cheese

Each one is paired with the legislation that would do the same thing if an agency will not.

The election changed the math

On January 3, a new Congress takes office with new majorities in both chambers. Every committee chair this agenda addresses will change. Every bill in it dies and has to be reintroduced.

That sounds like a setback. It is an opening.

New members come with new ideas and no settled habits, and plenty of them campaigned on what is in our food. The incoming House majority already has a planning memo with infant formula, heavy metals in baby food and GRAS reform at the top. It has almost nothing on pathogens. This community should hand them a page that does.

And there is still time this year. Government funding runs out December 11. The infant formula bill, S. 272, passed the Senate without a single objection in April. It has sat at the Speaker’s desk since May. The House could pass it before Christmas, or amend it with the testing language of H.R. 7867 and send it back.

Credit where it is due: this administration just proposed the first update to formula nutrient standards in nearly thirty years, and I said so. Food safety has never been a party question. In 1994, USDA declared E. coli O157:H7 an adulterant in ground beef after Jack in the Box. Every Congress and every administration since has left it alone. It took my beef practice away, and it is the best thing that has happened to food safety in my lifetime.

What I am asking

If you work in food safety, public health, nutrition, agriculture or the food industry, read the draft. Tell me which items your organization would sign. Item by item is fine; nobody has to sign the whole thing. Tell me what is wrong or missing. Comment on the petitions.

I would also like to host a working meeting in Washington in December, after the funding deadline. It will be one day, with a way to join remotely. I want both halves of this community in the same room, settling the shorter version that goes to the new Congress in January.

None of this is radical. Most of it is finishing what somebody already started. Food safety is not expensive. Outbreaks are expensive.

Put me out of the lettuce business, please. Put me out of the formula business and the chicken business too. That is what Project 2027 is for.

Sources

1. FSIS, Salmonella Framework for Raw Poultry Products, withdrawal (Federal Register, Apr. 25, 2025)
2. Congressional Research Service, Agriculture and Related Agencies: FY2027 Appropriations (R49343)
3. FSIS, Delayed Verification Sampling of NRTE Breaded Stuffed Chicken Products (Dec. 2025)
4. FSIS, Salmonella in Not-Ready-To-Eat Breaded Stuffed Chicken Products, final determination (Federal Register, May 1, 2024)
5. Food Safety Magazine, Consumer Reports to USDA: Release Validation Data on Salmonella Tests (June 2026)
6. Bill Marler, There is no kill step for Cyclospora (Food Safety News, July 2026)
7. CDC, Infant Botulism Outbreak Linked to Powdered Infant Formula, November 2025
8. CDC, Investigation Update on Infant Botulism Outbreak, June 2026
9. 21 CFR 106.55, Controls to prevent adulteration from microorganisms
10. FDA, Investigations of Foodborne Illness Outbreaks
11. USDA Economic Research Service, Cost Estimates of Foodborne Illnesses
12. Hoffmann et al., Economic Burden of Foodborne Illnesses Acquired in the United States (2025)
13. CDC, Fast Facts: Health and Economic Costs of Chronic Conditions
14. Regulations.gov, Docket FDA-2025-P-3071 (Kessler citizen petition)
15. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Microbiological Data Program
16. Food Safety News, MDP Shuts Down; USDA Testing of Produce for Pathogens Halted (Jan. 2013)
17. Reddy, Wang, Adams and Feng, Prevalence and Characteristics of Salmonella Serotypes Isolated from Fresh Produce Marketed in the United States, J. Food Prot. (2016)
18. Bill Marler, Time to bring back the MDP to help Make Produce Safe Again (Food Safety News, Nov. 2024)
19. Draft citizen petition, Disclosure of Firms Implicated in Foodborne Illness Outbreaks (Marler Blog)
20. Stop Foodborne Illness, citizen petition on company names as confidential commercial information (Feb. 2026)
21. K&L Gates, 2026 Midterm Election Guide to the 120th Congress (Nov. 4, 2026)
22. S. 272, Protect Infant Formula from Contamination Act (Congress.gov)
23. H.R. 7867, Infant Formula Safety Modernization Act of 2026 (Congress.gov)
24. HHS, First Major Update to Infant Formula Standards in Nearly 30 Years (Oct. 29, 2026)
25. Bill Marler, Credit Where It Is Due on Formula Nutrients (Marler Blog, Oct. 29, 2026)
26. FSIS, Risk Assessment of E. coli O157:H7 in Ground Beef
27. Bill Marler, Food safety is not expensive. Outbreaks are expensive. (Food Safety News, Aug. 2026)
28. Bill Marler, Put me out of the lettuce business, please (Food Safety News, Oct. 2026)

Saturday, November 7, 2026

Last Saturday’s edition was about things getting put in writing. This week (week 18) was about files getting closed. San Luis Obispo County closed its Brookshire Farms investigation Friday afternoon, five and a half hours after the farm reopened with free pumpkins, at fifteen sick, three children with kidney failure, one unique strain and no source. FDA closed six outbreak files in a single Wednesday update, 540 illnesses in all, and named romaine and parsley on the way out but not whose. CDC and FDA closed the Evergreen broccoli sprout outbreak at thirty-four sick and said the seed came from New Zealand through a domestic supplier they still will not name. Virginia went the other way and extended its oyster closure past the end date on its own order. And on Tuesday the voters closed one Congress and opened another, the part of the week that decides whether any of these files get reopened. That is where this week starts.

The county closed the Brookshire Farms file at 4:27 Friday afternoon, five and a half hours after the farm reopened at eleven with thousands of free pumpkins. San Luis Obispo County Public Health’s closing release counts five laboratory-confirmed E. coli O157 infections, all in people who visited the farm on October 17 or 18, plus ten symptomatic visitors between October 16 and 26, fifteen in all, up from thirteen on October 30. Whole genome sequencing matched three of the five to each other, a fourth result is pending and a fifth could not be sequenced; the matched strain did not closely resemble anything in the national databases, which the county reads as a common and unique source. Water, food and environmental samples came back negative for O157, other E. coli turned up in some of them, four exposures remain notable but unconfirmed, edible corn cups, pumpkins, hay and non-potable water, and no further testing is planned. The release also says no farm animals or petting zoo were open to the public during the outbreak, which takes the animals off the table and leaves the things children handle and eat. The words HUS, hospital and child do not appear in it; the three children with hemolytic uremic syndrome are in the October 30 release and nowhere since. The farm had announced the reopening on Instagram Thursday night on the strength of negative tests. I wrote Friday morning that a negative swab does not clear a farm and that the county should say where it stood before the gates opened, and Friday night that it closed the file five hours after they did without the pending sequence, a sampling summary or a word about the children. Will County has posted nothing on Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm since October 23, with five confirmed cases and the animal, bedding and water samples at the state lab since the twenty-seventh, and Dallas County has still published nothing on the nine State Fair of Texas petting zoo cases beyond what its director told a television station on October 28. I put the national number on the record Friday: CDC estimates roughly a million illnesses a year from animal contact, and we are still building petting zoos without sinks. The firm represents a Brookshire Farms family.

FDA closed six outbreak files in one Wednesday update, 540 illnesses, and named two foods on the way out without saying whose. The CORE table stamped November 4 marks ref #1402 closed at 43 Salmonella I 4,[5],12:i:- cases with romaine lettuce named as the likely source twelve weeks after the row was posted, every environmental sample negative and the product past its shelf life; ref #1392 closed at 175 Cyclospora cases, adjusted down from 241, with parsley named; a new ref #1396 split off from it was posted and closed the same day at 66 cases with no food; and the 119-person Salmonella Newport file, the 99-person Oranienburg file and a 38-person Cyclospora file closed with nothing named. Of the 540, 218 got a food on the way out and 322 never will. No grower, brand or state appears for the romaine or the parsley; FDA’s explanation to Food Safety News is that the products were past their shelf life. I wrote Thursday about what twelve and fifteen weeks buys, and on Sunday about why a negative sample is not a dead end when sequencing, epidemiology and traceback are in hand. That leaves ten active rows. Five carry no food and 161 illnesses between them, down from 693 in ten rows last Saturday because the closures moved the cases to the other table, not because anyone found a food; the Salmonella Javiana file posted October 28 is at 65, up from 59, with traceback now checked; the Listeria file posted in September is at 51; and the chicken wrap file is now marked confirmed. CDC’s dashboard reads 28 active multistate investigations, sixteen Salmonella, seven STEC, three Listeria, two Campylobacter, and CDC posted no new notice this week.

CDC and FDA closed the Evergreen Fresh Sprouts outbreak Wednesday at thirty-four sick in six states, and the closing update names the country the seed came from but not the company that sold it. The final count is 34 ill, Washington 26, Montana 4, Idaho, Minnesota, Oregon and Utah one each, three hospitalized, onsets July 7 to September 11, ages two to 87. FDA’s advisory says its own sample from the domestic seed supplier matched the outbreak strain by whole genome sequencing, traceback showed the lot was imported from New Zealand, and the supplier recalled it; the advisory still calls it the seed supplier, while FDA’s enforcement report, as I noted two Saturdays ago, lists an Albany, Oregon seed company recalling two broccoli seed lots to consignees in eleven states and the United Kingdom. Three retail seed recalls off that lot, EAK, Eden Brothers and Gardeners Basics, are the only names a home sprouter will find. CDC’s final update drops Evergreen’s name from its text. The Justice Department told FDA on October 26 that its disclosure rule is its own and can be rewritten; the sprout file closed nine days later written exactly as it would have been before. The firm represents a Washington resident sickened in this outbreak.

Virginia extended the Little Wicomico River closure past the end date on its own order, and the order itself still reads November 7. VDH’s outbreak page, updated Friday, says that effective November 8 the harvest-area closure extends beyond the thirty-day emergency closure because of the positives on October 13 and 21, and that reopening will take three consecutive clean rounds. Round two, collected October 21, found Salmonella in three of the four company leases, and its whole genome sequencing is still pending sixteen days later; a third round came out of the cages November 2 and water and oyster samples from the public grounds went to the University of North Carolina on November 4, neither with results posted. The October 26 public-ground samples were negative. Emergency Condemnation #010A, the legal instrument, was last updated October 8 and still says October 9 through November 7, with no amended order on the page the day before it lapses. CDC is unchanged at 28 sick in 13 states, five hospitalized, as of October 30, and Virginia counts three residents. The company’s notice still does not say Salmonella.

A Yakima County dairy worker died of H5N1 on Sunday, the first bird flu death in the United States this year, and Washington’s herd count reached forty in three weeks. The Yakima Health District announced the death November 1: a resident with underlying conditions, exposed at a dairy with infected cattle. The county has three confirmed human cases, none since, and its herd table runs from two confirmations on October 8 to thirty-nine by October 30; WSDA confirmed one Benton County herd on October 26, making forty. CDC read the virus’s genetic sequence and found nothing suggesting easier spread, and says the risk to the public is low. USDA confirmed Indiana’s first two dairy herds November 2 through the national milk testing program, the twenty-first state since March 2024. Yakima’s page says pasteurized milk is safe and raw milk is not; Washington still licenses raw milk for retail sale, and nothing public says whether licensed raw milk from the two counties is being tested for the virus. Food Poison Journal has what Washington families need to know.

The recall ledger was light on pathogens and heavy on things that are not supposed to be in food at all. Brad’s Raw Chips recalled about 25,000 bags of Crunchy Kale and Veggie Chips Kale nationwide on November 3 for thallium, a heavy metal, after the California Department of Public Health traced one person’s elevated thallium level to the chips; the lots shipped October through December 2025 and the best-by dates run to February 2027. FDA added a twenty-first product, Wise Wife ground cinnamon at 2.118 parts per million of lead, to its elevated-lead cinnamon list. Vitality Works’ recall of one lot of 365 Whole Foods Market ashwagandha capsules for Salmonella, on sale eleven months in thirty states, reached FDA’s page October 30. Phyllis Entis at eFoodAlert logged no United States alerts from October 31 through November 2 and on November 4 caught the one pathogen recall nobody announced: Arrow Reliance, which makes Darwin’s Natural Pet Products, pulled two lots of Natural Selections chicken cat food for Salmonella by emailing consignees, with no public notice, nine days after FDA’s October 26 advisory on the same brand. She also carried FDA’s warning letter to La Cabana Food Distributing of Oceanside, California, posted November 3, with Listeria monocytogenes on a scale, cart wheels and the floor of a salsa plant and no environmental testing program. FSIS posted one public health alert, for Betterballen frozen snacks with undeclared sesame and anchovy, and no pathogen recall; its site would not load this week and that item comes from Food Safety News. West Virginia has said nothing since its October 29 advisory on 41 Salmonella Typhimurium cases with no source.

Perrigo told investors Wednesday that infant formula was consuming cash, and the congresswoman who wrote the botulism testing bill said parents deserve answers before the ByHeart founders buy the business. On its November 4 earnings call Perrigo priced the sale of its formula business to MeridianMade at up to $175 million, $40 million at closing and $135 million in milestones through 2030, moved formula into discontinued operations, and did not mention ByHeart. Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s October 30 statement says families still do not know how, when or where their children’s formula became contaminated, and that she worries about consolidation. FDA’s formula testing page, updated October 29, now covers 312 samples for four heavy metals, thirty PFAS, 318 pesticides and twenty-one phthalates, and still has no row for the organism that put 52 babies in the hospital. I wrote the committees a third time on Wednesday, the morning after the election, with five legislative weeks left and an offer to fly the families to Washington, and the Clostridium botulinum testing petition goes to FDA this week with Stop Foodborne Illness and the parents of twenty-three infants as co-petitioners. The supply chain behind Nara and the long version of ByHeart are both on the blog.

The voters handed both chambers to the Democrats on Tuesday, and the people who chair the committees that fund and oversee FDA and USDA change in January. CBS has Democrats at a minimum of 54 Senate seats with Alaska and Mississippi uncalled and on pace for roughly 255 House seats. Frank Pallone has asked for the Energy and Commerce gavel, Rosa DeLauro is in line for Appropriations, Bernie Sanders is expected back at HELP, and both Agriculture committees need new Democratic leaders because Angie Craig and Amy Klobuchar are leaving. Congress returns November 9 with the continuing resolution, and its Section 780 bar on traceability enforcement before July 20, 2028, running to December 11. I published fifteen things the lame duck can do and a Project 2027 working paper this week. FDA held its traceability public meeting Friday: twenty-nine registered commenters, from FMI to Oceana to a retired field epidemiologist, with neither the acting commissioner nor the acting head of the Human Foods Program on the agenda; comments on the lot-code flexibilities are due December 6, and no account of what was said had been published by Saturday morning. FSIS said in its October 30 constituent update that it will swab food-contact and non-food-contact surfaces in ready-to-eat plants nationwide starting January 2027. Judge Chhabria refused Wednesday to lift his stay on USDA’s relocation notices. Consumer Reports’ November 6 deadline for FDA to answer its eight questions on the Cyclospora outbreak passed without a public reply that I could find. And USDA’s romaine shipping study got my answer at Food Safety News: truck routes did not put manure on lettuce, the field did.

That’s the week — a county that closed its file five hours after the farm reopened, with fifteen sick, three children in kidney failure and no source; FDA closing six files in an afternoon and naming romaine and parsley but not whose; a sprout outbreak closed with the seed traced to New Zealand and the supplier still unnamed; an oyster closure extended past its own order; a dairy worker dead of bird flu in Yakima County; and an election that decides who gets to ask about any of it. Next week brings the pending Brookshire sequence, Illinois’s animal and water results, Virginia’s third round, Congress back in session and, if it posts, the botulism petition on FDA’s docket. 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.