Lisa Fletcher, Andrea Nejman and Nathan Aaron published a piece yesterday on the two infant formula botulism outbreaks — the 48 babies across 17 states sickened by ByHeart Whole Nutrition, the four more sickened by Nara Organics — and on what the FDA knew about the risk before either one happened. They gave me a few minutes in it. I would rather spend this post on them.

Understand what they walked into. By every measure a newsroom uses, this story is finished. CDC declared the ByHeart outbreak over on February 26, 2026. The recalls are done. Nobody died. That is the point where coverage stops, and it stopped. Back in May I put the whole complaint in a headline: botulism and infant formula had gone out of the news, but the babies and the families are still here. These three went and reported it anyway.

And they reported it, which is a different thing from writing it up. They asked Representative Rosa DeLauro whether she would support a congressional hearing on the outbreaks, and got her on the record saying she would look into it and that it was important to do. They got her explaining that a member in the minority cannot call a hearing but can hold briefings — and that when her office tried to arrange one, the agency was not helpful. That is news, and I had not seen it anywhere. They asked Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie whether he would move the Infant Formula Safety Modernization Act forward. His office did not respond. Then they went to the congressional record and established that as of August 14 the bill has gone to no markup and no floor vote since its April 29 hearing. That is four calls and a records check nobody else made, on a bill I have written to both the House and the Senate about.

They also got the part that matters most, which is a parent talking. Amy Mazziotti asked every doctor who came into her son’s room whether it was the formula, and was told there was no way, and said she felt as though she were being gaslit for asking. She was right. Months later ByHeart was recalled nationwide. I represent families in both of these outbreaks, and I will say what I have said for thirty years: the mother is usually right about what the child ate.

Her closing thought is better than anything I have managed to write on this since November. Every story about these babies ends by noting that nobody died, as if that settled it. As she put it, “just because they didn’t die doesn’t mean they’re OK.” Then she asked whether a baby has to die before this becomes important. I do not have an answer for her. Neither does the rule.

None of this is a first outing for these three. Spotlight on America is Sinclair’s national investigative unit; Fletcher is its national investigative correspondent, Nejman its national investigative producer, Aaron a video journalist. They spent a year on toxic heavy metals in baby food, won a National Press Club award for it, and two states passed testing laws afterward. This is a team that keeps showing up on what babies eat long after the cycle has left, which is why they were the ones still here to make the calls this week.

The line of mine they used is the one I care about most. I can count on one hand the number of times a government official has reached out to a parent, or asked a parent to come tell Congress what it was like to watch a child on a feeding tube. That has been my ask for three decades and I made it again in June, in writing, to the Secretary and to the Acting Commissioner. What Fletcher, Nejman and Aaron did here is a version of that same hour — they put a mother in front of a national audience and let her describe the week. A television crew did what the government has not done.

Meanwhile the substance has not moved an inch. Federal regulation still requires finished powdered formula to be tested for exactly two organisms, and Clostridium botulinum is not one of them. The FDA is still working the root cause of both outbreaks, three years after it named the organism in its own letter to industry. The bill that would close the gap sits where it sat in April. And 535 t-shirts, one for every member of Congress, go to the Hill in September.

My thanks to Lisa Fletcher, Andrea Nejman and Nathan Aaron, and to the editors who gave them the time and the airtime for a story with no fresh recall attached to it. Attention is the scarcest resource these families have. You spent some of it on them. Please keep going.

Their story is here.