Tip of the Pen to the Healthy People Food Safety Workgroup: Forty Years of Scorekeeping Show Salmonella Has Not Budged Since 1997, Three of Four Pathogens Are Going the Wrong Way, and We Stopped Measuring the Trend. Here Are Ten Things That Would Move the Needle.

By Bill Marler on October 28, 2026

The Journal of Food Protection just posted an open-access article that every food safety regulator, industry executive and member of Congress should read, and then reread Table 1. “Tracking Illnesses Caused by Four Foodborne Pathogens Over Four Decades of the Healthy People Initiative,” by Robin Pendley Louis, Daniel Weller, Hazel Shah, Kristal Southern, Doug Noveroske and Priya Kadam, walks through how the federal government has set and measured national targets for Campylobacter, Listeria monocytogenes, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) and Salmonella from Healthy People 2000 through the most recent Healthy People 2030 data. Tip of the pen to the authors. It is careful, honest bookkeeping. It is also a report card, and the grades are not good.

What the report card says

In Healthy People 2000, the government set modest targets and met all four. In Healthy People 2010, it set out to cut each infection rate in half and met only one, E. coli O157:H7. In Healthy People 2020, it met none. And in Healthy People 2030, as of the most recent data:

Campylobacter went from 16.2 infections per 100,000 people to 20.6, against a target of 10.9. Getting worse.

STEC went from 4.6 to 5.7, against a target of 3.7. Getting worse.

Listeria went from 0.27 to 0.36, against a target of 0.22. Getting worse.

Salmonella went from 15.3 to 15.2, against a target of 11.5. No detectable change.

Now look at Salmonella across the whole table. The Healthy People 2010 baseline, set in 1997, was 13.6. The target was 6.8. By 2009 the rate was 15.0. The Healthy People 2020 baseline was 15.0, and the final number was 14.5. Today it is 15.2. We have gone from a goal of cutting Salmonella in half, to a goal of cutting it by a quarter, to a goal pegged to FSIS performance standards that simply carried the old target forward – and we are still at roughly 15 per 100,000. Thirty years. Different surveillance, different definitions, different targets. Same number.

The authors are right that comparisons across decades require caution. Baselines moved from single years to three-year averages. Healthy People 2020 began counting all STEC, not just O157. Healthy People 2030 added infections diagnosed by culture-independent diagnostic tests (CIDTs) and dropped travel-related cases. And the authors point to research showing that much of the recent increase tracks the growing use of CIDTs, which find infections that used to go undiagnosed. I take that seriously. But it cuts both ways. If better tests are finding illness that was always there, then the burden was always bigger than we were counting – which is a reason to work harder, not to set softer targets for 2040. And no change in lab methods explains thirty flat years of Salmonella.

We stopped measuring the trend

Here is the part of the article that should alarm everyone. FoodNet, the active surveillance network that has measured these targets since 1996 and covers about 16 percent of the country, went from eight pathogens to two on July 1, 2025, for lack of money. Only STEC and Salmonella are still required. The article says plainly that 2023 is the last year Campylobacter was measured for Healthy People.

To be precise about it, because people who know this system well have corrected me before: sick people are still reported. Cases of the dropped pathogens still flow through the national notifiable disease system, and Listeriathrough the Listeria Initiative. What ended is the measured trend – the ability to say whether anything we do is working. Campylobacter is the pathogen moving fastest in the wrong direction, and it is the one we stopped measuring. And Cyclospora was dropped from FoodNet a year before the country ran the largest parasitic foodborne outbreak in its history this summer, more than 18,000 laboratory-confirmed cases. You cannot hit a target you have stopped measuring. You can only stop being embarrassed by it.

What is at stake

The article cites the numbers. CDC’s most recent estimate is that seven major pathogens cause 9.9 million domestically acquired foodborne illnesses, 53,300 hospitalizations and 931 deaths a year. The Government Accountability Office found that between 2011 and 2022 more than 9,000 foodborne outbreaks were reported in all 50 states, at a cost of $75 billion a year, and that CDC, FDA and FSIS have made limited progress toward their own targets. And those numbers undercount. The case count stops the day the fever breaks. A ten-year-old on dialysis for nine days with hemolytic uremic syndrome does not show up in the death count, and the kidney damage that follows her for the next twenty years does not show up anywhere. These are not abstractions to me. They are my clients.

“The workgroup does not identify strategies.”

That sentence, from the article’s introduction, is the problem in seven words. Healthy People sets the targets. It leaves it to “federal agencies, communities, states, food industry, and organizations across the country” to decide what to do about them. A target without a strategy is a wish.

The article’s own history makes the point. The wins it credits – FSIS declaring E. coli O157:H7 an adulterant in ground beef in 1994, Pathogen Reduction/HACCP in 1996, juice HACCP in 2001, the Listeria rule for ready-to-eat meat and poultry in 2003, six more STEC serogroups declared adulterants in 2011, and the Food Safety Modernization Act – almost all came after outbreaks forced someone in power to act. And the only pathogen in four decades to meet a “cut it in half” target was E. coli O157:H7, the one the government made illegal to sell in ground beef and the industry was forced to test for. That is the lesson of Table 1: binding rules move the numbers. Aspirations do not.

The workgroup is now setting targets for Healthy People 2040. Here are ten things that would actually move the needle. Most of them come out of something I have been working on with friends – and a few people who are not so friendly – from consumer and victims’ groups, public health, state regulators, academia, labor and the food industry itself. We are calling it Project 2027: a working agenda of known problems with known solutions, things that would make American food safer and can be done by people who already have the jobs. The not-so-friendly readers have made it better. They have told me where I am wrong, and a few times they have been right.

1. Enforce the one Salmonella standard FSIS already has, then write the one it needs. In May 2024, FSIS declared raw breaded stuffed chicken with Salmonella at 1 CFU per gram or more adulterated. Testing was to start May 1, 2025. FSIS pushed it to November 3, then on December 2, 2025 delayed it indefinitely with no new date. The standard is law, and nobody is checking for it. Meanwhile, in April 2025 FSIS withdrew its Salmonella framework for the rest of raw poultry after three years of work. That matters to Healthy People directly: the 2030 Salmonella and Campylobacter targets were set to “align” with FSIS performance standards. Step one is to make FSIS publish its method data and set a testing date. Step two is my citizen petition asking FSIS to declare Salmonella at 1 CFU per gram an adulterant in raw ground chicken and turkey and raw chicken parts. I used to be in the beef business with E. coli, and what FSIS did in 1994 took that practice away from me. It is the best thing that has happened to food safety in my lifetime, and every argument being made against doing it for poultry was made and lost by the beef industry thirty years ago.

2. Measure again – the laboratories first. Protect PulseNet and the state public health laboratories that do the sequencing behind every multistate outbreak count; without them an adulterant standard nobody can sample for is a press release. Then restore or rebuild FoodNet for all eight pathogens, with modernization written into the ask rather than used as the excuse to let it go. Consumer and academic groups asked Congress last November for a 50 percent increase, about $36 million, for CDC’s food safety program. Ask again, and this time attach the summer to the request. And Healthy People 2040 should not lower a target because better tests find more of the illness that was always there.

3. Sample the food, not just the sick. From 2001 to 2012, USDA’s Microbiological Data Program tested about 15,000 produce samples a year for Salmonella, Listeria and E. coli, sent its positives to PulseNet and triggered 38 recalls in its last four years. It cost about $4.5 million a year, and it ended in 2012 when nobody asked for the money and Congress did not appropriate it. The produce industry lobbied against it because its findings caused recalls – which is another way of saying it worked. FDA’s own sampling assignments since then have been valuable, but sixteen hundred samples of one commodity every year or two is not a baseline. Two asks: publish, sample by sample, the testing FDA already pays the states to do through its laboratory cooperative agreements, which costs nothing; and fund dedicated produce sampling again. Surveillance of people tells you who is already sick. Sampling of product tells you what is coming.

4. Kill the traceability rider. Section 780 of the law that ended last November’s shutdown bars FDA from spending a dollar to enforce its own food traceability rule before July 2028 and nudges the agency to loosen lot-level tracking, the heart of the rule. I wrote in Food Safety News how that happened. Every day a traceback runs on invoices, phone calls and memory is a day contaminated food is still moving and people are still eating it. The fiscal 2027 appropriations bill should carry no version of that language.

5. Send an inspector when an outbreak points at a plant – and set a floor for the foods that keep making people sick. FSMA sets inspection frequency by risk category, every three years for high-risk facilities, and says nothing about the one event that most reliably tells you something went wrong at a particular plant: people got sick from its product. FDA routinely closes outbreaks without ever walking the facility, which means it never learns the root cause. Require a for-cause inspection within a set period once an outbreak is linked to a firm, with the findings made public. Then do for leafy greens, sprouts, cantaloupe, cucumbers, onions and frozen berries what Congress did for infant formula in 2022: an annual inspection floor, reaching foreign facilities too. That last part matters. FSMA set a goal of 19,200 foreign food inspections a year; last year FDA did 1,024, and as The Washington Post just showed, it has inspected about 2 percent of the Mexican facilities that ship us produce. The Listeria line in Table 1 needs the same discipline on the meat side: when a plant racks up documented noncompliance, as the Boar’s Head plant did before ten people died in 2024, the next step should be suspension, not another report. (In the interest of full disclosure, I represent people sickened in that outbreak.)

6. Let FDA sample the feedlot next door. STEC is rising, and leafy greens keep telling us why. In the 2018 Yuma romaine outbreak, the outbreak strain was found in a canal running past a large cattle operation, and FDA had no authority to set foot on it. The investigation stopped at a fence. The Expanded Food Safety Investigation Act, S. 376 and H.R. 852, would let FDA sample animal feeding operations during an outbreak investigation; it has never had a hearing. My citizen petition asks FDA to do the same thing by rule under section 361 of the Public Health Service Act, the authority it used in 1975 to reach pet turtles. A root cause nobody is allowed to find is a root cause nobody fixes. And this fall’s run of petting zoo outbreaks is the same bacteria without the lettuce.

7. Name the food, the firm and the stores – while it matters. Every day an outbreak food sits in kitchens unnamed adds cases to the Healthy People numerator. On Monday, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel told HHS that FDA’s own regulations, not the law, keep outbreak supply chain information secret, and that FDA can change them. My two petitions – one on naming firms implicated in outbreaks, one on publishing retail consignee lists in Class I recalls, as USDA has done since 2008 – will go in together.

8. Count what happens afterward. Build a national registry of long-term outcomes from foodborne illness – kidney damage after HUS, reactive arthritis, Guillain-Barré, the rest – seeded through the FoodNet sites and the pediatric HUS surveillance that already runs. USDA’s own cost model admits the long-term data are thin. If Healthy People 2040 measured severity and sequelae and not just case counts, the targets would point at what actually costs this country money and children their kidneys. This is research money, the kind an appropriator can put in report language.

9. Put a name next to every target. Federal food safety oversight has been on GAO’s High-Risk List since 2007. In 2017, GAO recommended a national food safety strategy to deal with the fragmentation among the fifteen agencies and thirty statutes involved. In January 2025, OMB told GAO it had no plans to write one. Healthy People is the closest thing we have to a national scorecard, and by design nobody owns the score. For each pathogen target in 2040, FDA, FSIS and CDC should publish what they are doing to hit it, report against it every year and bring it to their appropriations hearings – and the White House should finally write the strategy GAO asked for nine years ago.

10. Tell people the truth where they buy the food. Some risks will not be regulated away in the next decade, so consumers deserve to know them at the point of sale. My petitions asking FDA to require warning statements on raw milk cheese and raw sprouts – foods that keep turning up in STEC and Salmonellaoutbreaks – ban nothing. They put one sentence on the label.

And an eleventh, for the workgroup itself. Healthy People tracks four bacteria. The biggest number in foodborne illness is not one of them. CDC puts norovirus at 5.5 million domestically acquired foodborne illnesses a year, more than any other pathogen, and the mechanism most of the time is a food worker who came in sick because staying home cost a shift. Put norovirus in Healthy People 2040, and the Food Code’s employee health rules and paid sick leave for food workers will finally have a number attached to them.

None of this works without money.

Every item above assumes someone is there to do it. An adulterant standard nobody can sample for is a press release. A traceability rule with no investigators behind it is a filing cabinet. Congress has to fund the people who do this work, and fund them adequately: FDA’s food program, so it can inspect the plants and foreign facilities it is already supposed to inspect; FSIS and its roughly eight thousand frontline inspectors; CDC’s food safety program, PulseNet and the surveillance that tells us whether any of this is working; and the state and local health departments, public health laboratories and epidemiologists who take the first call, interview the sick, sequence the isolates and find most outbreaks before Washington hears about them. The government spends a small fraction on prevention of what foodborne illness costs this country every year. Cutting it is not saving money. It is moving the bill to hospitals, families and the businesses whose products end up on a recall list.

The petitions

Seven of the asks above do not have to wait for Congress, an appropriation or a new administration, so I am putting them in front of the agencies myself as citizen petitions. To FSIS: declare Salmonella at 1 CFU per gram an adulterant in raw ground chicken and turkey and raw chicken parts, and start the breaded stuffed chicken testing it already promised. To FDA: write a rule letting investigators sample the animal feeding operation implicated in an outbreak; name the firms implicated in outbreaks; publish the stores, restaurants and schools that received food in a Class I recall; put a warning statement on raw milk cheese; put one on raw sprouts; and, with forty-six parents of infants hospitalized in the ByHeart and Nara Organics outbreaks, add Clostridium botulinum to the required testing of powdered infant formula and the dairy ingredients it is made from. That last one is not one of Healthy People’s four pathogens. It should not have to be. If you would like to see the drafts and tell me what I got wrong, email me.

The bottom line

The Healthy People Food Safety Workgroup has done what it was asked to do. It set targets, measured honestly, and published the results, even when the results are unflattering. That is more than can be said for a lot of government. But forty years of data now say the same thing: the targets we met were the ones backed by binding rules, and the ones we keep missing are the ones we left to hope. Healthy People 2040 is being written now. If we want a different report card in 2040, we need different rules in 2027 – and we need to keep measuring.

Read the full article. It is short, and Table 1 is worth the price of admission, which is free. If you want to help with Project 2027, friendly or not, or want to tell me what I left off this list, email me at bmarler@marlerclark.com.

Outbreaks are preventable. But you have to decide to prevent them.

Pumpkin Patches, Petting Zoos and State Fairs: Three New E. coli Investigations, Twenty-Five Years of Outbreaks Just Like Them, and the Prevention Playbook Everyone Already Has

By Bill Marler on October 28, 2026

Posted in Case News

In the space of five days this October, three health departments opened investigations into Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) infections tied to animals at fall attractions: five confirmed cases, four of them hospitalized, at Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm in Homer Glen, Illinois; five confirmed cases at Brookshire Farmsin San Luis Obispo, California, which has closed; and a cluster of sick children Dallas County is investigating in connection with the petting zoo at the State Fair of Texas. None of this is new. What follows is a short history of how we got here, and the prevention measures that have been written down, revised and re-published for twenty years.

This happens every year, and the numbers are not small.

The Compendium of Measures to Prevent Disease Associated with Animals in Public Settings has been published by the National Association of State Public Health Veterinarians (NASPHV) since 2005. The 2023 revision is summarized in the December 2023 issue of JAVMA, and the full version counts 156 outbreaks involving animals in public settings in the ten years ending in 2020. Those outbreaks caused 6,388 illnesses, 1,233 hospitalizations and 10 deaths. The full version also notes that outbreaks are only part of it: in a Minnesota study of non-outbreak illnesses linked to animal agriculture, 28 percent of the STEC patients had visited a fair, petting zoo, agritourism farm or similar venue, and six developed HUS.

I started tracking these outbreaks on Fair-Safety.com years ago. The outbreak list there runs back to the early 1990s, but it stops in 2015 and still points readers to the 2017 Compendium. It is overdue for an update, and this post is the start of it. Here is a selection of the U.S. E. coli outbreaks, old and new:

Year	Venue	State	What happened
2001	Wyandot County Fair	Ohio	92 E. coli O157 cases tied to the fair.
2002	Lane County Fair	Oregon	82 ill; the largest E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in Oregon history.
2003	Fort Bend County Fair	Texas	25 visitors and animal exhibitors sickened.
2004	North Carolina State Fair petting zoo	N.C.	108 cases; 15 children developed HUS. The outbreak strain was found in shavings on a stroller and on visitors’ shoes.
2005	Florida State Fair, Central Florida Fair, Strawberry Festival	Florida	63 sick after goat contact at petting zoos run by one vendor; 7 developed HUS.
2005	Big Fresno Fair petting zoo	Calif.	At least six children; a two-year-old suffered HUS, kidney failure and strokes. The petting zoo relied on hand sanitizer.
2007	Day camp petting zoo	Florida	Seven children infected; a goat was implicated.
2011	North Carolina State Fair	N.C.	At least 27 sickened from eight counties.
2012	Cleveland County Fair	N.C.	106 people reported ill.
2012	Willow Grove pumpkin patch	Wash.	Four children sickened after a pumpkin patch and corn maze visit.
2013	Dehn’s Pumpkins	Minn.	Three children after contact with goats and cattle; one developed HUS.
2014	Traveling petting zoo, county fairs	Minn.	More than a dozen sickened by one traveling petting zoo that worked three county fairs and a festival.
2015	Oxford County Fair	Maine	Two toddlers with the same rare E. coli O111 strain; 20-month-old Colton Guay died of HUS.
2016	Goat dairy farm, kidding season	Conn.	50 confirmed cases, including secondary spread; three developed HUS. Goats and the farm environment were widely positive.
2019	San Diego County Fair	Calif.	11 confirmed and 2 probable cases; three hospitalized; a two-year-old boy died. Animal and environmental tests were all negative.
2019	Minnesota State Fair, Miracle of Birth Center	Minn.	At least 11 sick, ages 2 to 43; six hospitalized, one HUS. Some never touched an animal.
2022	Farming day camp	Tenn.	Campers sickened; farm isolates matched patients by sequencing, and the farm euthanized two STEC-positive goat kids.
2023	Appalachian Fairgrounds school field trips	Tenn.	64 cases; seven hospitalized; four with HUS. Five of the nine lab-confirmed cases were household members of children who went.
2025	Arizona State Fair petting zoo	Ariz.	18 sick, median age 10; 11 hospitalized; six with HUS. No soap-and-water handwashing near the exhibit.
2026	Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm	Ill.	Five confirmed, four hospitalized; petting zoo closed; investigation open.
2026	Brookshire Farms	Calif.	Five confirmed; whole farm closed voluntarily; investigation open.
2026	State Fair of Texas petting zoo	Texas	A “cluster” of children under investigation; at least two hospitalized.

A selection, not a complete list. Sources are linked in each row: Fair-Safety.com outbreak summaries, CDC MMWR, state and county health departments, OutbreakDatabase.com and news reports. Counts are as last reported by the investigating agency.

The list could be much longer. Fair-Safety.com also documents outbreaks of Cryptosporidium, Campylobacterand Salmonella at farms, fairs and zoos here and abroad, and Food Poison Journal has a longer history of petting zoo and fair outbreaks.

What the outbreaks have in common.

Read twenty-five years of these investigations and the same facts keep showing up. The Compendium pulls them together, and they explain this October as well as they explain 2004.

Healthy-looking animals carry it. Cattle, goats and sheep are the usual sources. They carry STEC without getting sick and shed it intermittently, and young animals – the calves, kids and lambs that draw children – shed more than adults. Stress from transport, crowding and handling increases shedding.

You do not have to touch an animal. Fur, saliva, railings, bedding, sawdust, hay bales, manure on a fence, dust, a stroller wheel, a shoe: all have carried the bacteria in past outbreaks. STEC can survive in soil for months. Minnesota’s 2019 State Fair cases included people who never touched an animal, and Connecticut’s 2016 goat farm outbreak spread to people who had only been near someone who visited.

Testing the animals afterward rarely settles it. Because shedding comes and goes, the Compendium warns that a negative test does not mean the animal was not shedding earlier. In San Diego in 2019, every petting zoo animal, every pony and 32 environmental samples tested negative – after a child had died. The Compendium does not recommend routine screening for this reason. Prevention has to assume the animals are positive.

Temporary exhibits are the riskiest. The Compendium says temporary and seasonal exhibits are particularly vulnerable to design flaws, and so are working farms that were never designed for public events. The full version gives examples that read like this month’s news – animal displays added to festivals, farm stands, pick-your-own farms and Christmas tree lots – and lists the usual problems: inadequate barriers, surfaces that cannot be cleaned, insufficient plumbing, missing signs and too few handwashing stations. The traveling vendor that sets up for a weekend is exactly the operation least likely to have running water at the exit.

Hand sanitizer is not handwashing. In outbreak after outbreak, the Compendium says, handwashing has been protective: lathering with soap and water lowered the risk, while feeding animals without washing afterward and drying hands on clothing raised it. The full version adds that soap and water is still preferred over sanitizer, which does not work equally well on all pathogens or on dirty hands. The 2005 Fresno petting zoo had alcohol sanitizer. So, twenty years later, did the 2025 Arizona State Fair.

Food and animals do not mix. Contamination of food and drinks by people who have just touched animals has caused outbreaks, and the full Compendium adds that buying food at a farm visit and eating sticky foods like ice cream and cotton candy have been associated with STEC illness. Feeding animals and then eating without washing raises the risk. Some petting zoos still sell feed in ice cream cones, which the Compendium specifically says not to do.

Young children are the most at risk. Children under five put their hands in their mouths, sit on the ground and get close to the animals, and they are the most likely to develop HUS. The 2023 Compendium says preweaned calves, lambs, goat kids, reptiles and live poultry are not appropriate where groups at high risk are expected – and on a fall weekend at a pumpkin patch, or a school field-trip day at a fair, that is a lot of the crowd. Add that young animals shed STEC more than adults, and it is no surprise that so many of the rows in that table end with a toddler on dialysis. More on HUS is at about-hus.com.

How to prevent them – the Compendium’s playbook.

None of this is a secret. The Compendium is free, it has been around in some form since 2005, and the 2023 edition is posted by CDC and published by the AVMA. Washington’s Department of Health has turned it into a practical guide for fairs. The core recommendations for operators:

Tell visitors the risk before they go in. The Compendium calls educating visitors “of utmost importance”: awareness of the risk was protective in the 2004 North Carolina State Fair outbreak. That means signs, staff at the entrance, and information sent home before school field trips.
Divide the venue into three zones. Animal areas, transition areas at every entrance and exit, and non-animal areas where food is sold and eaten. No animals except service animals in non-animal areas.
Put soap, running water and paper towels at every exit. Enough sinks for peak crowds, at a height children can reach, and as close to the exit as possible – not across the midway.
Staff the exit. A staff member at the exit reminding visitors to wash is one of the interventions the Compendium cites as improving handwashing.
Keep food, drinks, bottles, pacifiers, sippy cups and toys out of animal areas. Provide stroller parking at the entrance.
Control feeding. Allow it only where contact is controlled, never sell feed in edible containers, and keep feed and water bins away from the public.
Keep the youngest children away from the riskiest animals. Children under five should not have direct contact with preweaned calves and similar high-risk animals, and should be supervised at all times around the rest.
Design for one-way traffic and avoid overcrowding. Use double barriers where contact is not intended, remove manure promptly and keep manure tools and piles out of public reach.
Use a veterinarian and keep records. Exhibit only healthy animals, keep sick animals and herds with recent diarrhea out, and keep records of where animals came from and where they have been, so investigators can trace them.
Do not sell raw milk or unpasteurized cider. The full Compendium says their sale or distribution should be prohibited.

For parents and visitors, the short version: wash with soap and water as soon as you leave the animal area and before eating, even if you think you did not touch anything; do not eat, drink or let children use pacifiers or bottles in animal areas; do not let small children sit or play on the ground there; wash after handling strollers and shoes that went into the pens; and if a child develops bloody diarrhea within ten days of a farm or fair visit, see a doctor and tell them about the visit. Antibiotics and anti-diarrheal drugs are generally not recommended for suspected STEC in children.

Recommendations are not requirements.

Here is the uncomfortable part. As the full Compendium acknowledges, no U.S. federal law addresses the risk of disease transmission where animals and the public mix, and only some states regulate things like handwashing stations. The Compendium tells agencies to work to ensure compliance and to build its recommendations into regulations, and the full version notes that studies keep finding the recommendations are not fully followed. After Arizona’s outbreak, a bill requiring handwashing, signage and supervision at petting zoos died in the legislature; the Arizona State Fair and the Maricopa County Fair dropped direct animal contact on their own. Voluntary decisions by a few fairs are not a standard.

Every state should turn the Compendium into a rule: soap and running water at every animal-area exit, staff at the exit, no food in animal areas, no feed in cones, records of animal sources, and a public notice requirement when a cluster is identified. Every health department that opens one of these investigations should publish the case count, ages, hospitalizations and HUS cases on a schedule, sequence every isolate, and put the final report online, so the next operator can learn from it. Twenty-five years of outbreaks is enough data.

Frequently asked questions

Can you get E. coli at a petting zoo without touching an animal? Yes. Outbreaks have been traced to railings, bedding, sawdust, hay bales, dust and contaminated shoes and strollers, and STEC can survive in soil for months.

Is hand sanitizer enough after a petting zoo? No. The full 2023 Compendium says soap and running water is preferred, because sanitizers do not work well on dirty hands or equally well against all pathogens.

Who is most at risk? Children under five, adults over 65, pregnant people and people with weakened immune systems. Young children are the most likely to develop hemolytic uremic syndrome.

Are petting zoos regulated? There is no federal law addressing disease risk at animal exhibits. Some states require handwashing stations; most rely on voluntary guidance like the Compendium.

Two Pumpkin Farms and the State Fair of Texas: Three E. coli Investigations Tied to Animal Attractions in Five Days, in Three States. Here We Go Again.

By Bill Marler on October 27, 2026

Posted in Case News

On Tuesday afternoon, October 27, the County of San Luis Obispo Department of Public Health announcedfive confirmed cases of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) and an investigation into a possible link to Brookshire Farms, the pumpkin patch, corn maze and Christmas tree farm on Los Osos Valley Road. The farm has closed voluntarily. Tuesday night, FOX 4 in Dallas reported that Dallas County Health and Human Services is lab-testing a cluster of STEC infections in children and investigating whether they came from the petting zoo at the State Fair of Texas. Add the five confirmed cases at Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm in Homer Glen, Illinois, four of them hospitalized, and that is three investigations, in three states, tied to animal attractions at fall events – all made public in the five days since October 23. Every October I write some version of this post. This year I am writing it three times over.

What San Luis Obispo County has said.

Five confirmed STEC infections. A suspected exposure period at Brookshire Farms that was first announced as October 16 through 18 and then, in a 4:00 p.m. update, widened to October 16 through 26 – the entire last ten days the farm was open. The source of the infections is under investigation. The county is telling anyone who visited during that window and develops cramping and bloody diarrhea, typically three to ten days after the visit, to call their doctor, and it notes that children under 10 face the greatest risk of complications. County Health Officer Dr. Christy Mulkerin urged anyone exposed and symptomatic to seek medical attention immediately. The farm is cooperating, and, according to KSBY, its owner has said a direct link to the farm has not been confirmed.

One housekeeping note for the county: the updated release widens the window to October 26, but the subheadline and the Spanish-language version still say October 16 through 18. A family that reads the Spanish release, visited on October 22 and has a child with bloody diarrhea today may conclude they are outside the window. Fix it.

What the county has not said.

Ages. Hospitalizations. Whether anyone has hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). The serotype – O157 or a non-O157 STEC. Whether the five isolates have been sequenced and match. Most importantly, what at the farm is suspected. A pumpkin patch is not a single exposure. According to the farm’s promotional listings, Brookshire offers hayrides, grain-cart rides, pedal carts, a jumping pillow, duck races, a playground, a hay climb, a hay maze and a corn maze, and a U-pick directory lists farm animals, school tours, birthday parties, fresh eggs and a picnic area where families can eat their own food. Was there animal contact? Where were the handwashing stations relative to the animals and the kettle corn? Were school groups on the property between October 16 and 26? Those answers tell parents and physicians where to look, and they cost the county nothing to release.

The State Fair of Texas: a “cluster,” children in the hospital, and a fair that says it has not been notified.

According to FOX 4, Dallas County Health and Human Services confirmed it is lab-testing a cluster of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli cases affecting children of a range of ages, is still interviewing families, and is investigating whether the State Fair petting zoo is the source. The county is not yet calling it an outbreak. At least two families told the station their children are hospitalized in Dallas, and Children’s Medical Center Dallas says it has seen an uptick in cases. The county has not released a case count, ages, hospitalizations, whether any child has HUS, or the serotype.

The fair’s own website describes the petting zoo in Little Lone Stars Land as a place to get close to emus, zebras, pigs and goats, with a nursery of sows, ewes, nanny goats and their young – and it advertises that fairgoers can feed the animals. The fair’s statement to FOX 4 says it has not received official notification, that it follows CDC-recommended precautions at its animal exhibits, and that no precaution can eliminate every risk. That last line is true. It is also why the precautions have to be the right ones – soap and running water at the exit, no food or bottles in the pen, someone watching the children – and why the fair should be asked now, in writing, what exactly was in place.

This is not the State Fair of Texas’s first brush with this. In the mid-2000s, after a run of petting zoo outbreaks around the country, the fair scrapped its Children’s Barnyard petting zoo when insurers raised rates; at the time, that petting zoo relied on hand-sanitizing gel and signs. Two decades later, the Arizona State Fair’s petting zoo outbreak taught the same lesson about sanitizer, and the Arizona State Fair has dropped direct animal contact for 2026. The State Fair of Texas did not.

Dallas County should do what I am asking of San Luis Obispo and Will counties: publish a case count, ages, hospitalizations and any HUS; issue a health alert to North Texas pediatricians and emergency departments; open a survey for fairgoers; sample the animals and the environment before the animals are gone; and sequence everything. The fair runs for weeks and draws enormous crowds, and once it closes the petting zoo and livestock animals scatter to their home farms. Every day of delay is a day of lost samples.

Brookshire closed the whole farm. Bengtson’s closed only the petting zoo. The State Fair has closed nothing.

The responses are worth comparing. In Illinois, Bengtson’s closed its petting zoo on October 23 and kept the rides, food stands and corn maze open with the health department’s blessing. Animal and environmental samples were taken on October 26, results are expected around November 5, and, as I wrote this morning, more than 200 visitors have filled out the county’s symptom survey. In California, Brookshire shut down entirely, in the last week of pumpkin season, while the county figures out what happened. That is a costly decision for a family farm, and it is the right one. It does not tell us whether the source is an animal, the environment or something sold on site. It does mean no one else is being exposed while the county finds out. In Texas, nothing has closed, and the fair says it has not even been officially notified.

	Brookshire Farms (San Luis Obispo, CA)	Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm (Homer Glen, IL)	State Fair of Texas (Dallas, TX)
Made public	October 27 – SLO County Public Health	October 23 – Will County Health Department	October 27 – Dallas County HHS, via FOX 4
Confirmed STEC cases	Five	Five (as of October 26)	A “cluster”; no count released
Ages / hospitalized / HUS	Not released	Ages 4 to 38; four hospitalized; HUS not reported	Children of various ages; at least two hospitalized per families; HUS not reported
Exposure window	October 16–26 (revised from October 16–18)	On or after September 29	Not released
What closed	The whole farm, voluntarily	Petting zoo only	Nothing reported; fair says it has not been officially notified
Suspected vehicle	Not stated	Petting zoo under investigation; food-service inspection clean	Petting zoo under investigation
Animal / environmental testing	Not stated	Sampled October 26; results expected about November 5	Not stated

Sources: SLO County Public Health release (October 27, 2026, as updated 4:00 p.m.); KSBY (October 27); FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth (October 27); Will County Health Department statements as reported by The Herald-News (October 26). Read October 27.

These are not food outbreaks, and food inspections will not solve them.

When STEC follows a farm visit, the vehicle is rarely a menu item. It is manure – on a goat’s coat, a pen rail, a hay bale, a stroller wheel, a shoe, the hand that then holds a cup of cider. Ruminants carry these bacteria without looking sick and shed them intermittently, which is why the Compendium of Measures to Prevent Disease Associated with Animals in Public Settings warns that a negative animal sample taken days after the fact does not clear the pen. The record goes back decades: the 2004 North Carolina State Fair, a Tennessee farming camp in 2022, the Willow Grove pumpkin patch in Longview, Washington, and last fall’s Arizona State Fair petting zoo outbreak, which sickened 18 people, hospitalized 11 and left six with HUS. The fixes have not changed either: soap and running water, not hand sanitizer, at every exit from an animal area; animal areas kept away from where people eat; no food, bottles or pacifiers near the animals; and someone watching to make sure small children actually wash.

Are the three connected?

Nothing released so far suggests they are. Three venues in California, Illinois and Texas, in the same few weeks of the busiest season of the year, is what the calendar looks like when hundreds of thousands of families with young children get close to livestock in October. Whole genome sequencing will answer the question, and all three counties should say whether their isolates have been uploaded to PulseNet.

What the counties should do now.

San Luis Obispo specifically: correct the exposure dates in every version of the release. Publish ages, hospitalizations and any HUS, and update them on a set schedule. Say whether the farm had animal contact and whether animals and surfaces have been sampled. Open a visitor survey the way Will County did, and push it to the schools that brought classes between October 16 and 26. Alert local pediatricians and emergency departments that bloody diarrhea in a child who visited the farm is STEC until proven otherwise – and that antibiotics and anti-diarrheals are a bad idea in that child. Sequence the isolates and publish the results, whatever they show.

For families: if your child visited Brookshire Farms between October 16 and 26, Bengtson’s on or after September 29, or the State Fair of Texas this fall, and develops bloody diarrhea, severe cramps, decreased urination, unusual paleness or lethargy, see a doctor and tell them about the farm visit. HUS can develop a week or more after the diarrhea starts. Background on E. coli, HUS and staying safe around farm animals is available.

Frequently asked questions

How many people are sick in the Brookshire Farms E. coli outbreak? Five confirmed STEC cases as of October 27, 2026. The county has not released ages, hospitalizations or HUS cases.

What is the exposure period? October 16 through 26, 2026, according to the county’s 4:00 p.m. update. Some versions of the release still show October 16 through 18.

Is Brookshire Farms open? No. The farm closed voluntarily while San Luis Obispo County Public Health investigates.

Has the source been found? No. The county says the source is under investigation and has not said what at the farm is suspected.

Is the State Fair of Texas petting zoo linked to E. coli? Dallas County Health and Human Services is investigating whether a cluster of STEC cases in children came from the petting zoo. No case count or confirmation of a source has been released, and the county is not yet calling it an outbreak.

Are the Brookshire, Bengtson’s and State Fair of Texas cases connected? There is no indication they are. Whole genome sequencing will show whether any of the isolates match.

Tip of the Pen to The Washington Post: FDA Has Inspected Only About 2 Percent of Mexican Produce Facilities Since 2009. Congress Sent Letters. The Post Did the Oversight.

By Bill Marler on October 27, 2026

Posted in Case News

Some reporting tells you something you suspected. Some reporting proves it with numbers. “The FDA rarely inspects much of the produce Americans eat,” published this morning by The Washington Post, does the second. Tip of the pen to reporters Caitlin Gilbert and Rachel Roubein (with Diana Baptista contributing), who, for the first time, combined FDA fresh-produce import data with FDA inspection data to see who is actually being checked.

The answer: almost no one.

What the Post found

Of the foreign facilities that account for 90 percent of fresh produce shipments to the U.S., only 7.6 percent have been inspected by FDA since 2009.
In Mexico, the top supplier by far, FDA has inspected only about 2 percent of the facilities that ship produce here.
Mexico supplies 96 percent of imported berries. There are 3,321 major berry suppliers, and FDA has conducted 28 inspections of them since 2009. Peppers: 398 major suppliers, 57 inspections. Fresh herbs: 198 suppliers, 14 inspections.
The Food Safety Modernization Act, signed in 2011, set a goal of 19,200 foreign food inspections a year. Last year FDA completed 1,024, about 5 percent of the target.
Imports now make up 34 percent of fresh vegetables and 59 percent of fresh fruit Americans eat, up from roughly 17 and 46 percent two decades ago. Produce imports from Mexico have grown more than fourfold, to $16.7 billion last year.

Why it matters: look at this summer

The Post ties the data to the outbreaks we have been living with. Iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico was linked to the nation’s largest known cyclosporiasis outbreak: 12,883 people sick in 21 states, at least 570 hospitalized, and two deaths in Michigan. FDA had last inspected Taylor Farms’ Mexico operations seven years earlier. When investigators did go, they found Cyclospora in a wastewater tank and a drainage ditch.

In the Salmonella outbreak linked to jalapeños, which sickened nearly 500 people, FDA never sent a team to the grower it named as the “likely source.” The farm was in a region known for cartel activity. Security risk is a real problem. It is also a real gap in our food safety system.

FDA’s acting deputy commissioner for food, Donald Prater, told the Post that “inspections are not a good proxy for our overall oversight activities,” and pointed to border testing, importer record reviews and artificial intelligence. But the Post notes that only a sliver of imported food is ever physically examined at the border. Each foreign inspection costs about $38,700. The agency is asking for $9 million more for foreign inspections, plus authority to collect fees from foreign facilities that could bring in about $71 million.

The Post did the oversight work Congress has not

As cyclosporiasis cases ballooned this summer, I told the Post, I expected a congressional uproar, with hearings and lawmakers asking tough questions. This is a Jack in the Box–level event. Instead, outside of some letters to federal agencies and to Taylor Farms, “it’s been pretty silent.” That is still bizarrely shocking to me.

Letters are not oversight. Oversight is asking how many foreign produce facilities FDA has actually inspected, matching that against where our food comes from, and putting the answer in front of the public. That is what Gilbert and Roubein just did. Two reporters with FDA’s own import and inspection data produced the analysis that a congressional committee, with staff, subpoena power and the purse strings, should have demanded months ago. The Washington Post is doing Congress’s job.

Now Congress has no excuse. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins’ office calls the outbreaks “troubling.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro calls food safety one of her “highest priorities.” Good. The data is sitting in the Post. Jack in the Box in 1993 led to E. coli O157:H7 being declared an adulterant in ground beef. Spinach in 2006 and peanut butter in 2008 helped push FSMA through. Outbreaks have moved policy before, but only when someone in power picked up the ball. Here is where Congress should start:

Fund FDA to actually meet the foreign inspection mandate Congress set in 2011, starting with the highest-risk produce and countries.
Give FDA the foreign facility fee authority it is asking for.
Hold importers accountable under the Foreign Supplier Verification Program, and stop treating paper third-party audits as a substitute for boots on the ground.
Hold real oversight hearings, not just send letters, with FDA and the companies tied to this summer’s outbreaks at the witness table.

Read the Post’s full story, charts and methodology included. It is the most important produce safety reporting of the year.

Outbreaks are preventable. But not if no one is looking, and right now the people looking hardest work for a newspaper.

Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm E. coli Outbreak: Four of Five Sick Were Hospitalized, More Than 200 Visitors Have Reported Symptoms, and the Animal Samples Went to the Lab Monday. We Are Investigating for One of the Families.

By Bill Marler on October 27, 2026

Posted in Case News

As of October 26, 2026, the Will County Health Department counts five laboratory-confirmed Shiga toxin-producing E. coli infections possibly linked to visits to Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm in Homer Glen, Illinois, on or after September 29. Four of the five were hospitalized, the patients are between four and 38 years old, no deaths have been reported, and more than 200 visitors have filled out the county’s symptom survey. The petting zoo is closed; the rest of the farm is open. Marler Clark has spoken with the family of one of the children who was sickened and is investigating.

We are investigating on behalf of one of the families.

I will say this once and briefly. I have spoken with the family of one of the children sickened in this outbreak, and the firm is investigating. I am not going to describe the child, the family or the illness, now or later, beyond what the family chooses to make public. I have represented children sickened at pumpkin patches, petting zoos and fairs for a long time, including at a pumpkin patch in Longview, Washington, and the pattern of these outbreaks is familiar enough that the questions worth asking are already known. I listed them on Friday. What follows is what has changed since.

Four of the five people sickened were hospitalized, and that was not in Friday’s announcement.

When the county announced the investigation on October 23, it gave five lab-confirmed cases and nothing about ages or hospital care. The Herald-News reported Monday that four of the five were hospitalized, that at least three have been discharged, and that the county does not know the status of the fourth. The ages run from four to 38, and the patients do not all live in Will County, which communications manager Kevin Juday said is part of why the cases took time to surface and to be linked. Four hospitalizations out of five confirmed cases is a severe ratio for Shiga toxin-producing E. coli. It can mean a virulent strain, or it can mean that only the sickest people have been tested so far. Either way it belongs in the public notice, because it tells parents how seriously to take a child’s bloody diarrhea this week.

More than 200 survey responses means five is a floor, not a count.

The county asked anyone who visited on or after September 29 and became ill to complete a confidential online survey. More than 200 people have. Most of them will not turn out to be E. coli, and a survey is not a stool culture. But a petting zoo at a popular pumpkin farm in the Chicago suburbs during the busiest four weeks of its year sees tens of thousands of visitors, and the people who were sick two or three weeks ago and did not see a doctor will never be counted. Five confirmed cases spread across more than one county, four of them in the hospital, is the top of an iceberg whose size depends on how many of those 200 the county follows up with a call and a test request.

Date	What happened	Source
Sept. 29 onward	Exposure window for visitors asked to report symptoms	Will County Health Department
Oct. 21	County contacts the farm; food service areas and vendors inspected, no problems found	Farm statement; WGN
Oct. 23	Investigation announced: five lab-confirmed STEC cases; petting zoo voluntarily closed; survey opened	Will County Health Department
Oct. 26	Still five cases, ages 4 to 38, four hospitalized, at least three discharged; 200-plus surveys; railings, hand-wash stations and tables swabbed; veterinarian samples the animals	The Herald-News
About Nov. 5	Animal and surface laboratory results expected	Will County Health Department, via The Herald-News

Sources: Will County Health Department statements as reported by The Herald-News (October 26, 2026), WGN and NBC Chicago (October 23), read October 27. Check: four hospitalized of five confirmed is 80 percent; the confirmed count has not moved between October 23 and October 26 while surveys passed 200.

The samples taken Monday are the ones that matter, and a negative animal does not clear the pen.

On Monday, October 26, county environmental health staff swabbed railings, hand-washing stations and tables near the food service area and the petting zoo, and a veterinarian sampled the animals. Results are expected in about ten days. Two things about those results. First, ruminants shed E. coli O157 and the other Shiga toxin producers intermittently, so a goat that is negative on October 26 can have been shedding on October 10; the Compendium of Measures to Prevent Disease Associated with Animals in Public Settings says as much and warns against reading a negative as exoneration. Second, the question is not only whether an animal is positive but whether the animal isolate, the railing isolate and the five patient isolates are the same strain by whole genome sequencing. Illinois has the lab to do that. The county should say now that sequencing is planned and that the results, positive or negative, will be published.

A clean food-service inspection does not clear a petting zoo.

The farm’s statement leans on the October 21 inspection of its food service areas and vendors, which found no problems, and the county’s food-preparation tests have come back negative so far. Good. That is also beside the point. In the petting zoo outbreaks on the public record, from the 2004 North Carolina State Fair through the pumpkin patches in Washington and Minnesota, the vehicle was rarely a food item. It was manure on a rail, on a shoe, on a stroller wheel, on a hand that held a sippy cup, in sawdust that blew across a walkway. The county itself says it does not normally regulate petting zoos and is involved because the farm holds food permits. That is the regulatory architecture, not the county’s fault, and it is why the Monday swabs of railings and hand-wash stations are more important than any food test.

What the farm’s statement says, and what it leaves out.

In its statement to NBC Chicago, Bengtson’s says testing is under way, no source has been confirmed, its first thoughts are with the sick and their families, and the petting zoo is staffed, has hand-washing sinks at the entrance and exit and cleans its pens daily. Rides, attractions, food stands and vendors remain open. The statement does not mention that four people were hospitalized. It does not say how many visitors came through the petting zoo between September 29 and the day it closed, whether the farm will contact ticket holders, whether the animals have ever been tested before, or where the animals came from and under what contract. The county’s environmental health director, Sean Conners, says the farm can safely keep operating. I do not quarrel with that call for the rides and the corn maze. I would want the petting zoo to stay closed until the animal and environmental results are back and sequenced, not merely until the season ends.

What should happen in the next ten days.

Post a case definition and a weekly update, with ages, hospitalizations and any hemolytic uremic syndrome, so parents are not learning the hospitalization count from a newspaper. Call every one of the 200 survey respondents who reported bloody diarrhea and get them tested. Sequence every patient, animal and environmental isolate and publish the comparison. Ask the farm to notify ticket holders directly. And when the results are in, whatever they show, put the whole file on the county’s website, because the next pumpkin farm’s operator should be able to read it. The consumer version of this post, with symptoms, incubation and when to see a doctor, is on Food Poison Journal; the prevention material for families and operators is at Fair-Safety.com; and what HUS is and why it follows E. coli in young children is at about-hus.com.

How many people are sick from Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm E. coli? Five laboratory-confirmed cases as of October 26, 2026, ages four to 38, four of them hospitalized and at least three discharged. More than 200 visitors have submitted symptom surveys that the county is still reviewing.

Has the source of the Bengtson’s E. coli outbreak been found? No. Food-preparation tests are negative so far. Animals, railings, hand-wash stations and tables were sampled October 26, with results expected in about ten days.

Is Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm open? Yes, except for the petting zoo, which the farm closed voluntarily on October 23.

The Justice Department just told FDA what I have been saying: its own regulations are what keep outbreak names secret, and it has the authority to change them. Here is how I am changing my two petitions.

By Bill Marler on October 26, 2026

Posted in Case News

On October 26, 2026, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion to the Acting General Counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services titled Public Disclosure of Supply Chain Information in Foodborne Illness Outbreaks and Recalls. HHS asked a simple question: is FDA authorized by law to tell the public who is in the supply chain of a food that is making people sick?

The answer, in eight pages, is the argument I have been making for years. FDA’s current regulations mostly say no. The statute says FDA can change that. And FDA has not.

That matters right now. Fifty people are sick in the chicken wrap E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, reference #1421, that FDA and FSIS are investigating together. The public learned the wraps were Trader Joe’s Tarragon Chicken Salad Wraps from a lawsuit my firm filed and from a newspaper, not from either agency. In July, FDA told Stop Foodborne Illness that its pending petition on this exact question raised “complex issues.” The government’s own lawyers have now answered the hardest of them.

What the opinion says

First, the problem is FDA’s regulations, not the law. The Trade Secrets Act bars federal employees from disclosing confidential business information only when the disclosure is not “authorized by law,” and a properly issued regulation is enough authorization. FDA’s regulations treat the names and locations of firms in a supply chain as confidential commercial information under 21 CFR 20.61, and they wall that information off. The opinion concludes that, given those regulations, the Trade Secrets Act “largely prevents” FDA from disclosing supply chain information.

Second, the exception FDA leans on barely works. 21 CFR 20.91 lets FDA disclose information to the extent necessary to carry out an enforcement action like a recall. The opinion calls that authority “exceedingly narrow in practice.” It applies only when there is an actual enforcement action. In the opinion’s words, “FDA’s hands are tied before a recall is officially initiated.” And by the time FDA collects the information, it is often no longer “necessary.” The opinion also says the statute “nowhere requires” the case-by-case analysis in FDA’s 2020 consignee guidance, which it calls “arduous.” That is the chicken wrap outbreak in a sentence. The wraps were “proactively removed,” no recall was ever announced, and so nothing was ever disclosed.

Third, FDA can fix it. Section 705(b) of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act lets FDA disseminate information regarding food in situations involving, in the Commissioner’s opinion, “imminent danger to health or gross deception of the consumer.” Combined with FDA’s general rulemaking authority, the opinion concludes, that provision lets FDA amend its regulations to authorize disclosure of supply chain information. Disclosure under such a rule would be “authorized by law” and would not violate the Trade Secrets Act. The opinion adds that this would hardly be a “transformative expansion” of FDA’s power, and that neither the FOIA exemption for commercial information nor the Act’s own trade secret provision stands in the way.

Fourth, in a footnote, the opinion questions whether the identity of a supply chain partner is even the kind of information the Trade Secrets Act protects. Every item the Act lists concerns a company’s internal processes, and who a company buys from or sells to is different in kind. The opinion assumes coverage for purposes of its analysis and notes, fairly, that some appellate courts would likely see it the other way.

Fifth, there is a limit, and I want to be honest about it. The opinion says a regulation “purporting to authorize disclosure after a foodborne illness outbreak has already ended would likely be inconsistent” with section 705(b). The imminent-danger authority is a tool for an open outbreak.

Where disclosure should have happened, and why

The opinion is not an abstraction. Run the outbreaks in my petitions through it and you see exactly where the public was left in the dark, and on what basis it should not have been. FDA, CDC and their partners have named farms, processors and brands at least eight times since 2006 after the product was gone. Here is what happens when they choose not to.

Romaine, fall 2024 (reference #1280). Eighty-nine people sick in fifteen states, thirty-six hospitalized, seven with kidney failure, one dead. FDA closed the investigation with one word: romaine. When the traceback summary was first released, the processor, the grower and the ranch were blacked out. It came out unredacted more than a year later, in stages, and only after three firms in the supply chain signed consents to release their own information. The document showed traceback had converged on a single processor and a single grower. Why it should have been disclosed: while people were getting sick that fall, this was imminent danger by any measure, and a section 705(b) rule would have authorized naming the firms then. Instead, as the opinion confirms, the only route left was the firms’ own consent. The public’s right to know depended on the permission of the companies being named.

Romaine, summer 2026 (reference #1382). Fourteen people sick. For ten weeks the only public record was a single row reading “Not Yet Identified.” On September 10, FDA closed the file, said romaine for the first time, and named no grower and no processor because the lettuce was past shelf life. It never said how many states had cases, how many people were hospitalized, whether anyone developed HUS, or whether traceback converged. Why it should have been disclosed: case counts are not anyone’s trade secret, and FDA published exactly those numbers for a closed romaine outbreak in 2019. Naming the firm after closure is where the opinion’s limit bites, which is precisely why the petition asks FDA to define by rule that an implicated firm’s name is not confidential to begin with.

Salmonella Newport (reference #1403). Posted August 26 with eighty-four cases and the food “not yet identified.” Traceback and sampling began. The count rose to ninety-seven, then 111. On October 21, FDA closed it at 119 cases without ever naming a food. No inspection, no advisory, no CDC notice. Why it should have been disclosed: the name of a food is not confidential commercial information at all. While the count was climbing for two months, this was the textbook open outbreak the opinion says section 705(b) covers. The petition asks FDA to name the suspect food once traceback begins. One hundred nineteen people deserved at least that.

Cantaloupe (reference #1366). Seventy people sick in twenty-five states. FDA said the fruit was likely past shelf life. Yet the importer, Ayco Farms of Pompano Beach, recalled a lot on March 24, 2026, FDA put two Guatemalan growers on import alert, and all three were named. Why this one is the tell: the same year, past-shelf-life romaine got no name. The difference was not the danger. It was whether a recall or an enforcement action happened to attach, which is exactly the narrow 20.91 trigger the opinion describes. And even here, FDA’s executive summary still redacts the states with cases and the other firms in the traceback.

Packaged organic salads (reference #1339). FDA’s own executive summary says traceback converged on a supplier and processor of packaged organic salads, then redacts the name and even the number of traceback legs. Why it should have been disclosed: the work was done and the conclusion reached. All that is missing is a name, and the rule that would require it.

Happy Hens eggs, San Diego County. California named the forty-one stores that received the implicated eggs this September. The federal record named none, and the recalled date codes were packed in August, after nearly every illness. Why FDA could have said the same thing: once a state lawfully publishes the stores, that information has “previously been disclosed in a lawful manner to any member of the public,” one of the exceptions the opinion confirms is authorization by law. FDA did not need a new rule to repeat it. It needed to want to.

Beef kofta, May 2026, and the chicken wraps now. When product is gone, FSIS’s routine is to issue a public health alert naming the establishment. In May it named The Kebab Shop and the producer of beef made four months earlier. In the joint chicken wrap investigation, with fifty sick and the product identified, it has issued nothing. One government, two defaults, and the only difference is who happens to be making the call.

What I am changing in the Outbreak Firm Disclosure petition

A new disclosure rule, exactly as the opinion describes. The petition already asked FDA to declare by rule that an implicated firm’s name is not confidential commercial information, and to make distribution information disclosable whenever an outbreak food is pulled, whatever the company calls the removal. It now also asks for a new regulation under sections 705(b) and 701(a). That regulation would authorize disclosure of the firm’s name, location and distribution information whenever the Commissioner finds an outbreak presents imminent danger. It would also require conforming changes to the three regulations the opinion identifies as the current bars. Each of these three changes is an independent ground. If a court set one aside, the others would still authorize disclosure.

Drawing the line where the opinion draws it, at the outbreak and not the package. The new 705(b) rule applies while an outbreak is open. That means while people are still getting sick or cases are still being found, or while the food or an ingredient may still be in commerce, in homes or in other products. Past its shelf-life date or not. When an investigation closes, naming the firms rests instead on the rule defining what counts as confidential, on the case law holding that a business’s name is not commercial information in itself, and on FDA’s existing exceptions. I took out language that said section 705(b) carries no requirement that an investigation still be open. The petition now cites the opinion’s limit against itself, because a petition that hides the hard part is not worth filing.

“Use the authority you already have” now means the authority the opinion confirms. Until a rule is final, the petition asks FDA to name firms whenever one of four existing authorizations applies. The opinion confirms each counts as authorization by law: information already lawfully disclosed to the public, a court order, the firm’s consent, and an enforcement action under 20.91. The first one is bigger than it sounds. When a retailer tells a national newspaper which product it pulled and in how many states, that information is public. Once Trader Joe’s did exactly that, FDA’s own regulation let it post the same facts on its outbreak table. It still has not.

Two smaller changes. Because the opinion reads 20.91 as requiring an actual enforcement action, the petition no longer asks FDA to treat a whole genome sequencing match as one by interpretation. That request moves into the rule. And because the legal question is now answered, the petition asks FDA to respond with a proposed rule, not another interim letter.

What I am changing in the Recall Consignee List petition

The petition still asks FDA to do by rule what USDA has done since 2008: publish the stores, restaurants, schools, hospitals and other places that received food in every Class I recall, when the recall is announced. It now rests that rule on two authorities instead of one: 20.91, and section 705(b) as the opinion reads it. A Class I recall already means there is a reasonable probability the food will cause serious harm or death. So the petition asks that, when FDA classifies a food recall as Class I, it also state whether the Commissioner finds imminent danger. That way publishing the store list no longer turns on a case-by-case finding that it is “necessary.”

It also uses the opinion to support two requests already in the petition. One is dropping the guidance’s packaging test, the analysis the opinion called “arduous.” The other is confirming that pulling an outbreak food is a recall no matter what the company calls it, because the opinion confirms 20.91 does nothing until a recall is “officially initiated.” And it explains why the rule fits within the opinion’s limit. The list is published when the recall is announced and updated while it is underway, which is when consumers can still use it and health departments are still finding cases.

What is not changing

Both petitions still ask for the same core things. They ask for a written standard with the exemption closed and the burden on the firm. They ask for one business day for a firm to correct errors and a prominent correction if a named firm is cleared. They reach the whole supply chain, from grower to retailer. They ask for case counts and the suspect food while an investigation is open, and an honest account of the traceback when it closes. They still go in together, on the same day. Both now also copy the HHS Acting General Counsel, who asked for the opinion. I still support the Stop Foodborne Illness petition. And S. 4974, passed by the Senate in September, is now less a precondition than a supplement. FDA does not need to wait for Congress.

Read them. Tell me what you think.

If you would like the revised drafts, email me at bmarler@marlerclark.com and ask for the petitions. Please get comments back to me before October 30, 2026.

For years FDA has said its hands were tied. The Justice Department has now said who tied them. FDA did, in its own regulations, and it can untie them by rule. Fifty people are sick from a wrap whose maker the government will not name. The law no longer gives FDA an excuse. Let’s see whether it will act.

Twenty Years of the China International Food Safety & Quality Conference – and an Honor I Wish I Could Accept in Person

By Bill Marler on October 25, 2026

Posted in Case News

This Wednesday, October 28, the China International Food Safety & Quality Conference (CIFSQ) opens in Shanghai for its twentieth year. On Sunday morning I got a note from Cary Sun, the conference’s Global Event Manager, telling me that as part of the 20th anniversary ceremony the conference will recognize me as a Distinguished Contributor. I will not be there to take the plaque – my day job, and a docket full of outbreaks, is keeping me on Bainbridge Island – so someone will accept it on my behalf and send it home. I wanted to say thank you here, where more people will see it.

Good company

I share the Distinguished Contributor award with two people who have done far more for this conference than I have. Wu Yongning is chief scientist at the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment (CFSA) and director of the National Health Commission’s Key Laboratory of Food Safety Risk Assessment. Cindy Jiang is a global food safety ambassador and the former senior director of global food safety at McDonald’s. A plaintiffs’ lawyer and the woman who ran food safety for the world’s largest hamburger chain on the same slide. My career started with a hamburger in 1993, so I am not sure which of us should be more surprised.

The ceremony also honors Ge Zhirong, the conference’s honorary chairman and a former deputy director of China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, and Chen Junshi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chief advisor to CFSA, for distinguished leadership. The International Association for Food Protection is recognized as the conference’s distinguished global host. FDA, USDA, the European Food Safety Authority, Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Shanghai JS Life Sciences Institute are named distinguished supporters. And the ceremony closes with Cindy Jiang performing a song she wrote and composed for the occasion, “Food Safety Starts With You and Me.” I am sorry to miss that one in particular.

How a lawyer from Seattle ended up at a food safety conference in Beijing

It started with pets. During the 2007 melamine pet food recalls, someone told me about a new conference China’s quality and quarantine agency, AQSIQ, was launching in Beijing. I called the organizers. They offered me a keynote slot – if Marler Clark would become the Platinum sponsor. We did, and we kept doing it.

That September, at the first CIFSQ, I gave a keynote titled “The Legal Costs of Foodborne Illness,” and my colleague Suzanne Schreck led a breakout on what a company should do when it is identified as the source of an outbreak. A year later I was back in Beijing with “How US Consumers Hold Producers Accountable: A Civil Litigation Lesson in the US Market,” delivered just as the melamine-tainted infant formula scandal was exploding. I gave Former Washington Governor Gary Locke my keynote that year too (he went on to be Commerce Secretary and Ambassador to China under Obama). I said then that Chinese food safety officials were doing exactly the right thing by inviting people from around the world to come and share what they knew. I still think so. It was also the year Beijing hosted the Olympics, and my daughter, Sydney, made the trip with me. My friend Dave Ernst, a defense lawyer, now passed, spoke at the conference too.

In 2009 the conference slipped from September to November, and I gave two talks, the second on how American product liability law reaches Chinese producers who sell food in the United States. In 2010 CIFSQ moved to Shanghai, and my keynote was titled “Food Manufacturers: Why It Is a Bad Idea to Poison Your Customers.” I would not change a word of that title today. Getting there was its own story. I flew from Seattle to Los Angeles for a court hearing, then to Dallas and on to Fayetteville to teach at the University of Arkansas law school, then to Detroit, where I missed my flight. I still made it to Shanghai, where my wife, Julie, met me. After the conference I flew to Chicago for a deposition, and only then home to Seattle. I also missed the World Series in person that year, and I wrote at the time that food safety had become more than a law practice; it had become a mission. That has not changed either.

In 2020, COVID put me in front of a camera instead of a podium, and in 2021 I could not make the trip. In 2023 I was back for the opening session, on a panel about the challenges of foodborne disease moderated by Yuki Minato of the World Health Organization, alongside CDC’s Laura Gieraltowski, Martyn Kirk of the Australian National University, Markus Lipp of the FAO and Mohammad Alwetaid of the Saudi FDA.

I did not make the flight every year. Some years I sent a donation instead of myself, because the conference mattered whether or not I was in the room.

Why a food safety conference in Shanghai matters to people in Seattle

Food does not stay home. An ingredient that leaves a plant in one country can make people sick in another before anyone has a name for it, and the regulators, scientists and companies who have to find it rarely sit in the same room. For twenty years, CIFSQ has put them there. Look at the first morning’s program: CFSA’s Fan Yongxiang on risk assessment in China; FDA China Office Director Sarah McMullen on U.S. regulatory priorities, with a video greeting from Donald Prater, FDA’s acting deputy commissioner for food; Todd Reed, FSIS deputy administrator for science and policy, on meat, poultry and eggs; BfR President Andreas Hensel on Europe; and China’s State Administration for Market Regulation on enforcement. That is not a lineup you see often, and it is not one you get by accident.

What is on the program

Day one includes a countdown to China’s GB 7718 and GB 28050 labeling transition in March 2027, a panel moderated by Cindy Jiang on moving food safety culture “from compliance checkbox to measurable organizational behavior,” and a long afternoon on biomanufactured foods and new approach methodologies (NAMs) for chemical safety assessment, with speakers from WHO, FAO, FDA and EFSA.

Day two splits into fourteen breakouts: novel foods and alternative proteins, risk communication, AI, food contact materials, environmental monitoring for Listeria (including FDA’s Benjamin Warren on the revised Codex recommendations), PFAS and microplastics, omics-enabled risk assessment, food fraud, biotoxins, and two sessions on food safety culture. Vanessa Coffman of the Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness speaks in both of the culture sessions, which is exactly right. Every room that talks about food safety culture needs someone in it who speaks for the people who got sick.

The sessions I would have sat in on

Two of them. In the omics session, FDA’s James Pettengill and Ruth Timme will talk about the surveillance and computing infrastructure behind whole genome sequencing. Sequencing is the reason we now know, with near certainty, which sick people belong to the same outbreak – it is how I was able to show this week that my two clients in the Trader Joe’s chicken wrap outbreak sit in the same tight cluster on a public tree. In the hot topics session, FDA’s Melinda Hayman will walk through the Food Traceability Final Rule, a rule that has been law since 2022 and that, as I wrote for Food Safety News on Friday, nobody has to follow until July 2028.

Sequencing finds the cluster. Traceability finds the food. And then there is the risk communication session down the hall, which asks the question I keep asking: once you know, who do you tell? The best genomics and the best traceback records in the world do not protect anyone if the public never hears the result. That is true in Washington, D.C., and it is true in Beijing.

Thank you

Thank you to Cary Sun, Kenny Sun and the CIFSQ Secretariat, to Dr. Chen Junshi, and to IAFP for twenty years of building this bridge, and for thinking of me. Congratulations to Dr. Wu, to Cindy, and to everyone recognized on Wednesday. I hope the conference has a great twentieth year, and I hope to be back in Shanghai or Bejing for the twenty-first.

Outbreaks are preventable. That has always been the message, whether it is said in Seattle or in Shanghai.

Bill

Thank You Again – and One More Week: Comments on the Raw Milk Cheese and Sprout Warning Label Petitions Are Now Due Friday, October 30

By Bill Marler on October 24, 2026

Posted in Case News

A month ago, I posted drafts of two citizen petitions I intend to file with the FDA – one asking for a warning statement on cheese made from unpasteurized milk, the other on raw and lightly cooked sprouts – and asked you to tell me what I got wrong. On October 3 I thanked you and asked for more. You kept sending it. Thank you, again.

Many of you waded through tens of thousands of words of regulatory prose and sent back corrections, sources and arguments. Some of you agreed with me and some of you did not, and both kinds of comments made the petitions better. A few of the changes since the first drafts:

The cheese warning now says the bacteria “can cause serious illness or death.” The record – two deaths in the 2017 Vulto Creamery listeriosis outbreak, and hemolytic uremic syndrome in at least six people in the four recent cheese outbreaks – supports saying so, and FDA already uses those exact words in the same regulation for very low-calorie protein products.
A reader asked what “uncontroversial” means in the First Amendment test that applies to required label disclosures. It was a fair question, and the cheese petition now answers it, including the case least favorable to me.
A restaurant culinary director with twenty-one years in professional kitchens showed me how the FDA Food Code already requires a menu advisory for a hamburger cooked to order but not for the raw sprouts on the same plate. The sprout petition now asks FDA to close that gap.
Each petition now has an Appendix A showing the statement on a retail package, on a placard at a deli or sandwich counter, and on an online product page, so you can see what the warnings would look like.

Why the cheese petition matters more today than it did a month ago

The petitions were never about one outbreak, but the outbreaks keep making the case. In late September, CDC and FDA linked Graziers raw milk cheese from Sierra Nevada Cheese Company to an E. coli O26:H11 outbreak: 13 people in nine states, eight hospitalized, three with hemolytic uremic syndrome, and a median age of five. The first person got sick on July 7. FDA contacted the company on September 24 – eleven weeks later. The package told parents that the cheese was aged at least 60 days, which is what federal law requires. It did not tell them what FDA wrote in 2015: that E. coli O157:H7 can survive 60 days of aging in cheddar.

That is the fourth outbreak in thirty-one months linked to raw milk cheese that complied with the 60-day rule – Raw Farm in February 2024 and again in March 2026, and Twin Sisters Creamery in 2025 – for a total of 43 people sickened, 17 hospitalized and at least six with hemolytic uremic syndrome, many of them young children. And on October 5 the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement saying that aged raw milk cheese still poses an infection risk and naming warning labels as a measure pediatricians should support.

In the interest of full disclosure, and as both petitions state, I represent people sickened in the Graziers, Twin Sisters Creamery and Evergreen Fresh Sprouts outbreaks, and I have represented people hospitalized in both Raw Farm outbreaks. On October 6 I filed suit for the family of a child with hemolytic uremic syndrome in the Graziers outbreak.

Neither petition asks FDA to ban anything. Adults who want raw milk cheese or raw sprouts would remain free to buy them. The petitions ask for one sentence on the label, so that what the government already tells people in press releases and on web pages is in front of them when they make the choice.

The revised drafts

Email me at bmarler@marlerclark.com if you would like to review them.

One more week – here is what I would most like to hear about

Type size. Both petitions ask for the warning in type no smaller than 8 point, the size FDA requires in the Nutrition Facts panel. Look at the label renderings in the appendices. Is that big enough to be read in a grocery aisle, or should it be larger?
Cheesemakers and retailers: Is the placard at the cheese case and the deli counter workable? What would it cost you?
Sprout growers and seed sellers: Does the requirement for seed sold for home sprouting reach the right products, and does the exemption for validated treatment give you a real path off the warning?
Physicians and public health officials: Have I named the right groups, in the right words?
Everyone: What information unfavorable to these petitions have I missed? The certification FDA requires obliges me to include it.

Email me at bmarler@marlerclark.com or call 1-800-884-9840 by Friday, October 30, 2026. If you would like the Word version to mark up, ask and I will send it. After I file, FDA will assign each petition a docket number on regulations.gov, where anyone can comment formally, and the agency has 180 days to respond. Pointing out an error now is a lot more useful than pointing it out then.

Thanks again.

Bill

Thank You. Your Comments Made the Outbreak Disclosure and Recall Consignee Petitions Better. Trader Joe’s Tarragon Chicken Salad Wraps Show Why They Matter. One More Week for Comments.

By Bill Marler on October 24, 2026

Posted in Case News

Earlier this month I posted that I had drafted two citizen petitions to the FDA and asked anyone who wanted a copy to email me. The first asks the agency to establish by rule that the identity of a firm implicated in a foodborne illness outbreak is not confidential commercial information, and to name implicated growers, processors and distributors whether there is a recall. The second asks the agency to publish retail consignee lists in every Class I food recall, as the USDA has done for meat and poultry since 2008, and to classify every food recall promptly.

Many of you asked for copies, read dozens of pages of footnotes, and sent back thoughtful, sometimes pointed, suggestions. Thank you. The drafts are sharper, fairer to the firms that would be named, and harder to dodge because of it.

The Trader Joe’s wraps, in one paragraph

On September 23, the FDA posted an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak on its investigations table with 25 sick and the vehicle listed as a “multi-ingredient wrap with chicken (suspect).” No brand, no retailer, no manufacturer, no states, no recall. By then the FDA had already told Trader Joe’s there might be a “possible issue,” and Trader Joe’s had already pulled its Tarragon Chicken Salad Wraps from shelves in nine states. On October 15, with 50 sick, we filed Gottlieb and Bright v. Trader Joe’s Company, and the name entered the public record for the first time – in a court filing. On October 23, FSIS confirmed the link – in an email to USA TODAY. As of Friday evening, neither agency’s own website named the brand, the maker, the nine states, the hospitalizations or the HUS cases, and there was still no recall and no list of stores.

That is the problem these petitions are written to fix. And it is not unique to Trader Joe’s. Two days before FSIS answered USA TODAY, the FDA closed a 119-person Salmonella Newport outbreak without ever naming a food. In 2013, when Glass Onion Catering’s chicken salads and wraps sickened people who shopped at Trader Joe’s and elsewhere, the agencies named the maker and the products within days.

What the drafts now ask for

The outbreak firm disclosure petition now asks the FDA to write the rule with the confidentiality exemption closed, so that a firm that wants its name withheld has to prove, on the record, that its name is a genuine trade secret or competitively sensitive for some reason other than the outbreak itself. It reaches the whole supply chain – grower, cooler, processor, manufacturer, distributor and retailer – because in many produce outbreaks there is no brand to name. It gives a firm named in error a short notice-and-correction period before publication and a correction published with the same prominence afterward. For open investigations, it asks the agency to publish the case counts, states, onset dates, hospitalizations and HUS cases it already compiles, and once traceback begins, to name the suspect food and, for a multi-ingredient product like a wrap, the ingredient under investigation. And it makes disclosure turn on what happened, not on what the firm calls it: a “proactive removal” of an outbreak food is treated the same as a recall.

The recall consignee petition asks the FDA to turn its 2020 guidance into a binding rule on the FSIS model, to reach restaurants, schools, hospitals and other institutions as well as grocery stores, to classify every recall within ten days, and to confirm that pulling a food identified as the suspected vehicle of an outbreak is a recall, whatever the firm calls it, so that it is classified and its store list is published.

Had those rules been on the books in September, the people who bought Tarragon Chicken Salad Wraps would have learned which product, which retailer and which states from the government, not from a complaint and a newspaper a month later.

One more week

I plan to file both petitions after Friday, October 30. Until then, I would welcome another round. If you have not seen the current drafts, email me at bmarler@marlerclark.com and I will send them. I am especially interested in hearing:

From growers, processors and retailers: is a one-business-day correction window workable, and what would make it fair? How quickly can you produce a consignee list in a Class I recall?

From public health officials: does publishing case counts, states and onset dates during an open investigation help or hinder your interviews and case finding?

From lawyers and academics: what is the strongest Exemption 4 or Trade Secrets Act argument against these requests, and have I answered it?

From everyone: once the petitions are filed and docketed, a short supportive comment does more than you might think. I will post the docket numbers here.

Public health information should not depend on whether someone files a lawsuit, or a reporter has the time to ask. Thank you again for making these petitions better. Let’s make them better still this week.

How Did Salmonella Get Into Little Wicomico River Oysters? And No, This Is Not the First Time Raw Oysters Have Done This.

By Bill Marler on October 24, 2026

Posted in Case News

On October 19, CDC announced a multistate outbreak of Salmonella Telelkebir infections linked to raw oysters harvested by the Little Wicomico Oyster Company (VA-1421-SP) from the Little Wicomico River on Virginia’s Northern Neck: 27 sick, five hospitalized, no deaths, 12 states. FDA issued its own safety alert the same day. The company had already recalled shellstock oysters harvested September 18 through October 8, and the Virginia Department of Health had closed the river to harvesting under Emergency Condemnation 010A, effective October 9 through November 7.

Two questions keep coming up. How does a bacterium we associate with chicken and eggs end up inside an oyster? And has this happened before? The answers are “the water” and “yes.”

The most important fact so far: the river itself tested positive

Virginia’s October 23 update reports that on October 13 its Division of Shellfish Safety and Waterborne Hazards pulled 400 Little Wicomico Oyster Company oysters from cages in the river, processed them into eight meat samples, and sent them to the state lab. All eight tested positive for Salmonella. Genetic results to determine whether that is the outbreak strain are expected next week. A second round of 400 oysters was collected October 21, and on October 22 the state collected samples to test for fecal contamination.

That matters. Those oysters were still sitting in the river four days after the closure. They never went through a cooler, a truck, a distributor, or a raw bar. VDH also says that, to its knowledge, its inspections of the company’s dealer facilities have not turned up deficiencies linking its operations to the illnesses. If the sequencing matches, this points squarely at the growing water, not at post-harvest handling.

How oysters pick up Salmonella

Oysters are filter feeders. An adult oyster pumps dozens of gallons of water through its gills every day, straining out plankton and, along with it, whatever bacteria and viruses are suspended in the water column. Those microbes concentrate in the oyster’s tissue and gut. And we eat the whole animal, gut and all, raw.

Unlike Vibrio, which lives naturally in warm coastal water, Salmonella is not native to estuaries. It gets there in feces. The usual suspects are:

Human sewage: failing or overloaded septic systems along a rural shoreline, wastewater treatment plant bypasses or overflows, and discharges from boats and marinas.

Animal waste: wildlife, waterfowl and other birds, livestock and poultry operations, and pets, all of which can shed Salmonella without looking sick.

Stormwater runoff: heavy rain flushes all of the above off fields, yards, and roads into small tidal creeks, which may not flush out quickly.

Once in the water, Salmonella can persist in sediment and be stirred back up, and oysters held in shallow, near-shore cages sit right where runoff enters. The regulatory system, the National Shellfish Sanitation Program, classifies growing waters largely by fecal coliform counts. Those are indicators, not pathogen tests; water can meet the standard on sampling days and still carry Salmonella on others, especially after rain.

Post-harvest temperature abuse can let bacteria multiply, and cross-contamination in a shucking house is possible, but the cage results make those secondary questions here. Officials have not identified a pollution source, and VDH’s fecal contamination sampling may be the first real clue.

Reopening the area will require three consecutive rounds of negative product testing, according to VDH.

A rare strain, a familiar pattern

Salmonella Telelkebir is, in VDH’s words, a rare strain. That is what makes the history so striking. Last December, CDC reported a multistate Salmonella Telelkebir outbreak linked to raw oysters: 64 people in 22 states, illness onsets from June 21 to November 28, 2025. Of 44 people with information, 20 were hospitalized. Of 27 people interviewed, 20 (74%) reported eating raw oysters. CDC and FDA said they were working to find the source of the oysters. I am not aware that one was ever publicly named.

Look at where people got sick in 2025: Pennsylvania (10), New York (7), Virginia (6), and New Jersey (6) led the list. In 2026, Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia again top the CDC map. Same rare serotype, same season, largely the same states, two years running. And Virginia’s own broader case count included illness onsets going back to late May, months before the September 18 start of the recall window.

That pattern is what you would expect from a persistent environmental source rather than a one-time spill. The obvious questions for CDC, FDA and Virginia: Is the 2026 outbreak strain genetically related to the 2025 strain? Where did the 2025 outbreak oysters come from? And if the answer to the first question is yes, why was the source not found a year ago?

Is there a history of Salmonella outbreaks linked to oysters?

Yes, though it is not the pathogen most people think of. Raw oysters are best known for norovirus, hepatitis A and Vibrio. But Salmonella is there too. An FDA market survey cited by VDH found that about 1.5% of oysters nationally tested positive for Salmonella. That sounds small until you consider how many oysters are slurped raw by the dozen.

The recent record:

2026: Little Wicomico River, Virginia, Salmonella Telelkebir, 27 cases in CDC’s count, more in Virginia’s (see below).

2025: Multistate Salmonella Telelkebir outbreak linked to raw oysters, 64 cases in 22 states, 20 hospitalizations, source not publicly identified.

2023: The Canadian Food Inspection Agency found Salmonella and unacceptable levels of generic E. coli in oysters from Future Seafoods in Prince Edward Island, prompting an FDA advisory for product shipped to Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

2022: A Canadian recall of several oyster brands from Oyster Kings over Salmonella, posted with the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference’s running list of notices.

The ISSC list is worth a scroll. It is a decade-plus record of closures and recalls, including Virginia closures and recalls in 2019, 2020 and 2023, and a reminder of how often growing waters go bad.

Wait, weren’t the Virginia numbers higher?

Yes. As I wrote on October 20, Virginia’s outbreak page then reported 53 cases in 18 states as of October 14, and described CDC’s 27 as a genomic subgroup within that total. By October 21 the Virginia count had grown to 55 in 19 states, with the most recent illness beginning October 6.

The page Virginia posted on October 23 no longer gives that larger total. It now says three Virginia residents are among the cases, that CDC is focusing on a subcluster of 27 highly related cases from 12 states, and that, based on conversations with CDC, there are additional Salmonella Telelkebir cases beyond the 27 that are still under investigation to determine their source.

In other words, the 28 or so other people did not get better or disappear. They were moved off the page and into the “still investigating” column. Of the 27 in the subcluster, only 10 reported eating raw oysters, and tag and traceback records exist for seven. The company’s Little Wicomico River oysters were the only oysters all seven had in common.

If you got sick with Salmonella after eating raw oysters this summer or fall, you may be in one of those numbers, or in neither.

What to do

Do not eat, sell or serve recalled oysters. Check shellstock tags for harvest area (Little Wicomico River or Little Wicomico River Lower) and harvest dates of September 18 through October 8, 2026. Recalled oysters went to Colorado, Connecticut, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. Hot sauce and lemon do not kill Salmonella; cooking does. Read VDH’s fact sheet on the risks of eating raw oysters and clams, and if you are sick, see a doctor and ask for a stool test.

Marler Blog

Marler Blog

Tip of the Pen to the Healthy People Food Safety Workgroup: Forty Years of Scorekeeping Show Salmonella Has Not Budged Since 1997, Three of Four Pathogens Are Going the Wrong Way, and We Stopped Measuring the Trend. Here Are Ten Things That Would Move the Needle.

Pumpkin Patches, Petting Zoos and State Fairs: Three New E. coli Investigations, Twenty-Five Years of Outbreaks Just Like Them, and the Prevention Playbook Everyone Already Has

Two Pumpkin Farms and the State Fair of Texas: Three E. coli Investigations Tied to Animal Attractions in Five Days, in Three States. Here We Go Again.

Tip of the Pen to The Washington Post: FDA Has Inspected Only About 2 Percent of Mexican Produce Facilities Since 2009. Congress Sent Letters. The Post Did the Oversight.

Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm E. coli Outbreak: Four of Five Sick Were Hospitalized, More Than 200 Visitors Have Reported Symptoms, and the Animal Samples Went to the Lab Monday. We Are Investigating for One of the Families.

The Justice Department just told FDA what I have been saying: its own regulations are what keep outbreak names secret, and it has the authority to change them. Here is how I am changing my two petitions.

Twenty Years of the China International Food Safety & Quality Conference – and an Honor I Wish I Could Accept in Person

Thank You Again – and One More Week: Comments on the Raw Milk Cheese and Sprout Warning Label Petitions Are Now Due Friday, October 30

Thank You. Your Comments Made the Outbreak Disclosure and Recall Consignee Petitions Better. Trader Joe’s Tarragon Chicken Salad Wraps Show Why They Matter. One More Week for Comments.

How Did Salmonella Get Into Little Wicomico River Oysters? And No, This Is Not the First Time Raw Oysters Have Done This.

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