The World Health Organization has updated its estimate of what unsafe food costs the world, and the numbers are larger than the last time it counted. In a paper published in The Lancet Global Health (online June 3, 2026; August 2026 issue), WHO’s Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group estimates that 42 foodborne hazards caused 866 million illnesses, 1.52 million deaths and 57.1 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) in 2021. A DALY is one year of healthy life lost to illness, disability or early death.

I have spent more than thirty years representing people sickened by food in the United States. This paper is the wider picture those cases sit inside, and parts of it surprised me.

The numbers at a glance

Illnesses: 866 million (95% uncertainty interval 680 million to 1.09 billion). Against a 2021 world population of about 7.9 billion, that is roughly one person in nine.

Deaths: 1.52 million (783,000 to 2.51 million).

Healthy life lost: 57.1 million DALYs. WHO’s 2021 figures for tuberculosis, malaria and HIV are 60 million, 52 million and 40 million.

Lost productivity: US$310 billion, or US$647 billion adjusted for purchasing power. That is 0.52% of global GDP and 1.16% of GDP in low-income countries.

Most of the illnesses are infections. Most of the deaths are not.

Diarrheal pathogens account for 666 million of the 866 million illnesses. Chemical hazards account for 6.26 million illnesses, which is 0.7% of the total, and for 1.12 million deaths, which is 73%. Inorganic arsenic in food is tied to an estimated 641,000 deaths (42%) and lead to 466,000 (31%), largely through heart disease and stroke.

This is the first time WHO has counted cardiovascular disease from dietary metals, and the authors say it largely explains why the death estimate is so far above the 420,000 WHO reported for 2010. They also advise against comparing the two editions directly: the hazard list grew from 31 to 42, and the populations, models and inputs changed.

The authors attach their own cautions, and they belong in any honest summary. Most of the arsenic burden comes from exposure in India and China. The uncertainty interval for lead runs below zero at its lower end. Dietary metals are a small share of the world’s cardiovascular disease. And the authors write that the metals finding “must not divert efforts to address microbial hazards.”

The bugs I see in my practice

Set the metals aside and the diarrheal and invasive pathogens still account for about 404,000 deaths a year (296,000 and 108,000). The ones my clients know by name:

Non-typhoidal Salmonella: 23.5 million illnesses and 55,100 deaths. It is the leading microbial hazard by DALYs (3.58 million), as it was in the 2010 estimates.

Campylobacter: 148 million illnesses and 35,400 deaths.

Norovirus: 54.8 million illnesses and 14,100 deaths.

Shiga toxin-producing E. coli: 51.9 million illnesses and 20,500 deaths.

Hepatitis A: 20 million illnesses and 11,900 deaths.

Cyclospora cayetanensis: 10.2 million illnesses and 14,600 deaths. Cyclospora is new to the WHO estimates in this edition, and the uncertainty is wide; the interval for illnesses dips below zero.

Listeria monocytogenes: 22,800 illnesses and 5,280 deaths. That is nearly one death for every four illnesses, the pattern I have seen in every Listeria outbreak I have worked on.

Children under five carry the heaviest load

Children younger than five get sick from food at 2.7 times the rate of everyone else and lose healthy life at 4.3 times the rate. Their death rate from diarrheal hazards is 17.5 per 100,000, against 2.47 per 100,000 for people five and older, about seven times higher. The leading causes of burden in this age group are methylmercury, non-typhoidal Salmonella and rotavirus.

Where the burden falls

The highest rates are in two African subregions (1,261 and 1,150 DALYs per 100,000 people), driven by diarrheal disease, and in one South-East Asian subregion (1,264), driven by chemical hazards.

Wealthy countries are lower, not exempt. In the paper’s high-income Americas cluster (AMR A), the rate is 195 DALYs per 100,000, and 144 of that is chemical; arsenic alone is 116. Among infections in that cluster, Toxoplasma gondii (21.3) and non-typhoidal Salmonella (15.4) lead, with Listeria at 2.9 and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli at 1.8. High-income countries account for just under US$108 billion of the productivity loss.

What I take from it

There is good news. The total burden fell between 2000 and 2021, most visibly in Africa. The authors say the trend should be read cautiously and point to better food safety systems, water, sanitation and medical care as likely reasons.

The count is still an underestimate, by the authors’ own account. Hazards such as astrovirus were left out, three bacterial toxins counted in 2010 were dropped, and the dollar figure covers lost productivity only, not medical bills.

For the infections, the paper lists the tools: cooking, pasteurization, better irrigation practices, slaughter and meat inspection, and vaccination of animals and people. Nothing on that list is new. I have said for years that I would like to be put out of business. A world in which some 400,000 people a year die of foodborne infections is a long way from that.

The metals are a different problem. Arsenic and lead cannot be cooked or washed out; the authors say removing a chemical from food after contamination is unlikely, so prevention has to happen at the source, in soil, water and industrial activity, or through dietary advice about the foods that contribute most.

WHO has posted country-level estimates and trends in its 2026 edition dashboard and its Global Health Observatory. A count is not a fix. But governments set priorities by what they measure, and this is the best measurement we have had.

Source

Lake RJ, Devleesschauwer B, Majowicz SE, et al., on behalf of the WHO Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group for 2021–25. WHO estimates of the global, regional, and national burden of 42 foodborne infectious and chemical hazards, 2000–21: an updated data synthesis. Lancet Glob Health 2026; 14: 103994. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(26)00156-7. Open access (CC BY 3.0 IGO).

Nine children have been infected with E. coli O157 after exposures at Capitola Beach or the waterways around it in Santa Cruz County, California, and as of November 11, 2026, two of them had been hospitalized and, according to County Health Officer Dr. Lisa Hernandez, all nine have recovered. Four of the children live in Santa Cruz County and five in other Bay Area counties. No deaths have been reported. The source has not been found and the beach remains closed. Marler Clark has been retained by the family of one of the children, who developed acute kidney failure, and we have opened our own investigation.

All nine cases are linked, and the county says the exposures happened at the beach or in the surrounding water.

The Santa Cruz County release of November 10 says all nine infections are linked, which points to a common source, and that all exposures likely occurred at Capitola Beach or in surrounding waterways. It gives no ages, onset dates or exposure dates, and does not mention hemolytic uremic syndrome. Good Times ran the release with a photograph of a sign at the beach warning that creek water may be contaminated, a sign that has been part of the scenery at Capitola for a long time. I wrote about what the county had and had not said on Marler Blog that day.

Two children were hospitalized and all nine have recovered.

The new facts came the next evening. In a KSBW interview published November 11, Dr. Hernandez said there were two known hospitalizations linked to the outbreak and that “fortunately, no deaths [were] associated with this outbreak. All individuals have recovered.” I hope that holds. The child whose family has retained us developed acute kidney failure, which is hemolytic uremic syndrome by another name, and a child who has been through HUS is not recovered in the way a child who had three days of cramps is recovered. Kidney damage from HUS can show up years later as high blood pressure, reduced kidney function and, in some, dialysis or transplant. The county’s release did not mention HUS at all.

Capitola Beach E. coli O157 outbreakCountSource
Santa Cruz County residents4County release, Nov 10
Residents of other Bay Area counties5County release, Nov 10
Total cases, all children9County release, Nov 10
Hospitalized2Dr. Hernandez to KSBW, Nov 11
Recovered9 (all)Dr. Hernandez to KSBW, Nov 11
Deaths0Dr. Hernandez to KSBW, Nov 11

Counts as of November 11, 2026. Check: 4 Santa Cruz County residents + 5 other Bay Area residents = 9, which matches the county’s total.

The county sampled four sites and cannot promise it will find the source.

Environmental Health sampled four points along Soquel Creek and the beach: upstream near Nob Hill, the jetty, Soquel Creek Lagoon and the flume where the creek enters Monterey Bay, and Dr. Hernandez told KSBW that soil, water and fecal samples have gone to CDC. She also said she “can’t promise that we’ll have a source,” which is honest: the contamination that made the children sick may be long gone by the time the first case is reported.

Soquel Creek has been on California’s impaired-waters list for pathogens since 1996.

None of this is new to the creek. Soquel Lagoon, the body of water the creek forms behind Capitola Beach, was placed on the Clean Water Act 303(d) list of impaired waters for pathogens in 1996. In 2008 the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board adopted a fecal coliform cleanup plan for the lagoon, the creek and Noble Gulch, and listed the controllable sources in order: storm drain discharges carrying animal and human waste, sanitary sewer spills and leaks including private laterals, pet waste, and homeless encampments along the creek. The responsible parties it named were the City of Capitola, the County of Santa Cruz, the county sanitation district and private sewer-lateral owners, with thirteen years to comply.

Capitola Beach sat on Heal the Bay’s list of the twenty worst beaches in California from 2001 through 2004 and again in 2009, and the lagoon is permanently posted as unsafe for human contact. In 2009 the city spent a $600,000 state Clean Beaches grant on a treatment wetland beside the lagoon; the project’s own 2010 report found E. coli above the state guideline at the beach in every monitoring round before and after construction and called the wetland’s effectiveness limited. In Heal the Bay’s 2020–21 report card Capitola was the third most polluted beach in the state, with routine F grades; Capitola’s public works director put it simply: Soquel Creek runs into the middle of the beach and the water does not circulate. Lookout Santa Cruz told readers that summer to swim at least a hundred yards from the creek mouth. The sign in the Good Times photograph is the same warning, thirty years on.

One caution. Those grades measure indicator bacteria, which say fecal contamination is present. They do not detect E. coli O157, a specific strain carried mostly by cattle and other ruminants and sometimes by deer, birds and people. A creek can fail indicator tests for decades without O157 ever appearing. The question is not whether the creek is dirty, which was answered in 1996, but where the O157 came from this fall and who knew what about the water when children were in it.

What Marler Clark is doing to investigate.

We have represented children with HUS from recreational water for many years, most recently at Sycamore Pool in Chico, and the work is the same each time. We are gathering our client’s medical records and the stool culture and whole genome sequencing results from the California Department of Public Health lab, so that the outbreak strain can be compared to anything the county or CDC finds in the creek, the lagoon or the sand. We are requesting, under the California Public Records Act, the county’s and the city’s environmental sampling results from all four sites, their beach posting and closure records for the weeks before the closure, the sanitation district’s sewer spill and overflow reports for the Soquel Creek watershed this fall, and the illness onset and exposure dates the county has not released. We are asking the families of the other eight children to contact us, not because every family needs a lawyer, but because the exposure dates and the places each child went in the water are the data that locate a source. And we have retained environmental and microbiological experts to look at the creek, its storm drains and what sits upstream of Nob Hill.

The beach is still closed, and people were in the water anyway.

Closure signs stay up until the county says the beach can reopen. KSBW’s reporter watched surfers and several young children wading in the surf on November 11 anyway. Until the closure is lifted, stay out of the water inside the posted area, keep children and pets out of the creek and lagoon, and never let a child drink from a creek or lagoon.

E. coli O157 symptoms start three to four days after exposure and the kidney complication comes about a week later.

Most people infected with E. coli O157 get sick three to four days after swallowing the bacteria, with a range of one to ten days. The illness usually begins with severe stomach cramps and diarrhea that often turns bloody, sometimes with vomiting and a low fever, and most people recover in five to seven days. The danger is hemolytic uremic syndrome, which develops in roughly five to ten percent of diagnosed O157 infections, most often in children under five, usually about a week after the diarrhea starts and often as it is improving. Warning signs are urinating less often, extreme tiredness and losing the pink color in the cheeks and inside the lower eyelids; a child with those signs needs an emergency room. Do not give antibiotics or anti-diarrheal medicine for a suspected O157 infection unless a doctor who knows the diagnosis says so.

Is Capitola Beach open?

No. As of November 11, 2026, the beach is closed on the recommendation of the county health officer, with no reopening date; the county says it will notify the public when it reopens.

My child swam at Capitola Beach. What symptoms should I watch for?

Severe cramps, diarrhea that may turn bloody, vomiting and a low fever, usually three to four days after exposure and up to ten. Call a doctor for bloody diarrhea; go to an emergency room for decreased urination, unusual tiredness or pale skin, which can signal HUS.

Can E. coli O157 from a beach spread to other people in my house?

Yes. The bacteria spread in stool and a child can be contagious for a week or more after recovering. Soap-and-water handwashing and keeping sick children out of daycare and pools are the protections.

About Marler Clark. Marler Clark, The Food Safety Law Firm, has represented children and families in E. coli O157 and HUS cases since the 1993 Jack in the Box outbreak, including outbreaks traced to recreational water. If your child became ill after visiting Capitola Beach or Soquel Creek, you can request a free case evaluation at marlerclark.com or by calling 1-800-884-9840.

The Athens City-County Health Department in southeast Ohio said on Wednesday, November 11, 2026, that it is investigating four laboratory-confirmed cases of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) in Athens County. The department said its staff are working to identify how the infections occurred, whether there is a common source, and whether any risk to the public continues. The Athens Messenger first reported the announcement.

What the health department has said

  • Four cases, all laboratory confirmed as STEC.
  • No source has been identified. The department notes that STEC can spread through contaminated food or water, contact with animals, or contaminated surfaces.
  • People who are sick should wait at least 48 hours after their last episode of vomiting or diarrhea before returning to “in-person classes, work or campus and community events,” and should not prepare food for others during that time. Athens is home to Ohio University. The release does not say whether any of the four people are students.
  • People should seek emergency care for diarrhea lasting more than two days, blood in the stool or urine, severe abdominal cramps, frequent vomiting, dehydration, or unusual fatigue, pale skin and easy bruising.

Fatigue, pale skin and easy bruising are among the warning signs of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), the kidney complication that follows some STEC infections, most often in young children. The release does not mention HUS and does not say whether anyone has been hospitalized.

What has not been said

  • The serotype: E. coli O157:H7 or one of the non-O157 strains.
  • Whether whole genome sequencing shows the four infections are related to one another or to cases elsewhere.
  • When the four people became ill, their ages, and whether any were hospitalized.
  • Whether the four share a restaurant, event, food, water source or animal contact.
  • Whether the Ohio Department of Health has joined the investigation.

STEC is a Class B reportable disease in Ohio. Under the state’s Infectious Disease Control Manual, clinical laboratories send STEC isolates and Shiga toxin-positive specimens to the Ohio Department of Health Laboratory for culture confirmation and molecular analysis. That testing is what will show whether these four cases are an outbreak with a single source.

How four cases compare with the yearly numbers

States report STEC infections to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. The counts for the country and for Ohio over the last five years:

YearUnited StatesOhio
202113,943461
202216,406533
202318,844616
202420,630649
2025 (incomplete)17,876575

Reported STEC cases, United States (excluding territories) and Ohio. Source: CDC National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. The 2021 and 2022 figures are from CDC’s finalized annual tables. The 2023 figures are from the final weekly table of 2024, and the 2024 and 2025 figures are from the final weekly table of 2025, which CDC labels provisional.

The 2025 national count is not a real decline. When CDC published its year-end table, Minnesota had reported no 2025 cases, and Missouri and Washington had reported far fewer than the year before.

Ohio’s numbers have climbed for a decade. The Ohio Department of Health’s 2019 Annual Summary of Infectious Diseases counted 265 STEC cases in 2015, 263 in 2016, 287 in 2017, 537 in 2018 and 591 in 2019. The 649 cases reported for 2024 are more than double the 2015 count. Wider use of rapid diagnostic panels that detect non-O157 strains accounts for part of that increase.

Ohio’s 649 cases in 2024 work out to about 5.5 for every 100,000 residents. Athens County has about 62,000 residents. At the statewide rate, the county would expect three or four STEC cases in an entire year. Four confirmed cases at one time is the reason a health department looks for a common source.

The national trend is moving the wrong way as well. Food Safety News reported this week on a study by FDA, CDC and USDA researchers that found STEC incidence rose from 4.6 to 5.7 infections per 100,000 people, against a Healthy People 2030 target of 3.7.

If you are sick

According to the Ohio Department of Health, STEC symptoms begin two to 10 days after exposure, with a median of three to four days. Anyone in Athens County with bloody diarrhea or severe stomach cramps should see a doctor, ask for a stool test, and write down what they ate and where they went in the week before becoming ill. The Athens City-County Health Department can be reached at 740-592-4431.

This post will be updated when the department releases a serotype, case details or a source.

Santa Cruz County and the City of Capitola closed Capitola Beach on Tuesday, November 10, 2026, after the county’s Public Health Division was notified of nine E. coli O157 infections in children. Four of the children live in Santa Cruz County. Five live in other Bay Area counties. The county says all nine cases are linked, and that the exposures “likely occurred at Capitola Beach or in surrounding waterways,” according to the county’s press release.

The short version

  • Nine children are ill with E. coli O157. All nine cases are linked.
  • The source is unknown. Officials point to Capitola Beach or the waterways around it, which means Soquel Creek and its lagoon.
  • Capitola Beach is closed until further notice on the recommendation of the Santa Cruz County Public Health Officer.
  • Water has been sampled at four locations. No results have been released.
  • The county has not said how many children were hospitalized or whether any developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).

What the county has said

The closure is described as a precaution while the investigation continues. Environmental samples were taken at four places in and around Soquel Creek and the beach: an upstream location near Nob Hill, the jetty, Soquel Creek Lagoon, and the flume where the creek’s water enters Monterey Bay. More E. coli testing is planned. The county and city say they are working with the California Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

People are being told to stay out of the water in the posted closure area, not to drink untreated water from creeks or lagoons, to shower after contact with natural waterways, and to keep pets out of the water.

What the county has not said

A nine-child E. coli O157 cluster is a serious event, and the release leaves out most of what parents need. These are the questions I would put to the county today:

  • How many of the nine children were hospitalized, and how many have HUS?
  • How old are they, and when did each child get sick?
  • On what dates were they at the beach or in the creek? Families who were there the same days need to know.
  • What links the cases? Is it whole genome sequencing, a shared event, or interviews alone?
  • Were the four water samples tested for E. coli O157 itself, or only for the indicator bacteria used in routine beach monitoring? When will results be public?
  • What is upstream? Sewer lines, septic systems, livestock, wildlife and birds are all on the list in an investigation like this one.

This water has a record

Bacteria problems at the mouth of Soquel Creek are not new. Santa Cruz County Environmental Health keeps a list of ten creeks and lagoons that are permanently posted because of impaired water quality, and the Soquel Creek mouth at Capitola Beach is on it. The same county page, updated November 10, shows advisories based on November 9 testing for Capitola Beach at Soquel Creek, Soquel Creek Lagoon, and Capitola Beach at the Jetty. In 2021, the nonprofit Heal the Bay gave Capitola Beach an F and ranked it the third most polluted beach in California; the city’s public works director at the time pointed to poor circulation and animal pollution in Soquel Creek.

A posted sign and a closed beach are different things. Routine beach monitoring counts indicator bacteria. It tells you that fecal contamination is present. It does not tell you whether E. coli O157 is in the water. CDC made the point thirty years ago, writing that standard fecal coliform tests are insensitive to low concentrations of pathogens and that the infectious dose of E. coli O157:H7 is low. A child does not have to swallow much.

We have seen this before

Sycamore Pool, Chico, California, 2025. Children were hospitalized with E. coli O157:H7 after swimming and wading at Sycamore Pool and the Five-Mile Recreation Area, both on Big Chico Creek in Bidwell Park. Butte County issued a no-swim advisory for the creek, and CDC testing confirmed E. coli O157 at multiple locations along it, in samples that matched the strain that sickened the children. CDC’s preliminary findings pointed to grazing animals or birds, not human waste. My firm represents four of those children, and their families are suing the City of Chico.

The lesson is the same. Recreational water outbreaks hit small children hardest, the environmental source is often never pinned down, and the water can stay unsafe long after the first illnesses are reported.

If your child was in the water at Capitola

  • Symptoms of E. coli O157 infection usually begin three to four days after exposure but can take up to ten days. Watch for stomach cramps, diarrhea that is often bloody, and vomiting.
  • Call your child’s doctor, say that your child was at Capitola Beach or in Soquel Creek, and ask for a stool test for Shiga toxin-producing E. coli.
  • CDC advises against antibiotics and antidiarrheal medicines for these infections because they may raise the risk of HUS. Ask the doctor before giving either.
  • HUS typically shows up around a week after the diarrhea starts, sometimes as the diarrhea is improving. Less urination, unusual tiredness and pale skin are warning signs. Go to an emergency room.
  • Keep a sick child out of daycare, pools and shared baths. This infection spreads easily from one child to another.

What should happen next

I have spent more than thirty years representing children with HUS. Most were sickened by food. Water gets less attention, but the bacteria are the same and so is the damage to a child’s kidneys.

Closing the beach was the right call. The next right call is information. The county should publish the hospitalization and HUS counts, the range of exposure dates, and the results from all four sampling sites as soon as they are back, including whether the laboratory looked for E. coli O157 and not only indicator bacteria. Clinicians across the Bay Area should be told to ask about Capitola when a child comes in with bloody diarrhea. And before the beach reopens, the public deserves to know what was found upstream and what was done about it.

I will update this post as the county releases more.

San Luis Obispo County Public Health confirmed on Tuesday evening, November 10, that one person tied to the E. coli O157 outbreak linked to Brookshire Farms has died. Department spokesman Tom Cuddy told The Tribune that “one individual associated with the E. coli outbreak has died,” and that the county was sharing the news with the family’s permission. KSBY carried the same confirmation. The county offered its condolences and gave no age and no other detail about the person.

That is the family’s decision to make, and it should be respected. I have sat with families in this position for more than thirty years. Nothing I write tonight will be of any use to them. My thoughts are with them, and with the families whose children are still recovering.

I also want to recognize Kaytlyn Leslie and Hannah Poukish of The Tribune, who reported the death Tuesday night. It is an article no one wishes to write, about a loss in their own community, and they and their paper wrote it with care and restraint. Local reporters have carried this story since the first day, and the public knows what it knows because of them.

What the county has said, and what it has not

The official count has not changed since Friday. The county’s November 6 closing release lists five people with laboratory-confirmed Shiga toxin-producing E. coli O157, all of whom visited Brookshire Farms on October 17 or 18, and ten more who visited between October 16 and 26, became ill and are counted as suspect cases. That is fifteen. Some reports tonight use eight unconfirmed cases, which was the county’s October 30 figure; the closing release says ten.

The October 30 release also reported that three children had developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), the kidney failure that is the most feared complication of an O157 infection.

The county has not said whether the person who died was one of the five confirmed cases or one of the ten suspect cases. It has not said whether the person was one of the three children with HUS. 

As of tonight, the confirmation exists only as a statement to reporters. The newest item on the county’s public health news page is still the November 6 release.

The investigation closed on Friday without naming a source

The county announced it was wrapping up at 4:27 p.m. on November 6, about five and a half hours after the farm reopened. Its findings, in its own release:

The bacteria from three of the five confirmed patients matched each other by genetic testing and did not closely match anything in national databases, which the county said strongly suggests “a common and unique source.” A fourth test was pending. A fifth could not be done.

Water, food and other environmental samples from the farm did not find E. coli O157. Other strains of E. coliwere found in some samples.

Sampling was limited by the number of possible sources, the absence of testable items and the delay between exposure and sampling. No further environmental testing is planned.

Edible corn cups, pumpkins, hay and non-potable water sources were common to the people who became ill. None was identified as the source.

No farm animals or petting zoo were open to the public.

Health Officer Dr. Christy Mulkerin said in that release that a negative environmental result is not unexpected, because contamination is often temporary and hard to detect, and that the clinical and epidemiological evidence still points to a short-lived shared exposure. She is right about that. A negative swab taken days later does not clear a location. It means the bacteria were gone, or missed, by the time anyone looked.

I wrote that night that closed is not the same as answered. That was true on Friday. It carries more weight now.

What E. coli O157 does every year

The CDC estimates that E. coli O157 causes about 97,000 illnesses, 3,270 hospitalizations and 30 deaths in the United States each year.

CDC does not publish a national yearly count of HUS. Its FoodNet surveillance found that 6.3 percent of people with a confirmed O157 infection developed HUS, and 15.3 percent of children under five did. Applied to CDC’s illness estimate, that is roughly 6,000 HUS cases a year. That figure is my arithmetic, not CDC’s, and it is a rough one, because CDC’s estimate includes milder illnesses that are never diagnosed. In the same data, 4.6 percent of the people who developed HUS died.

Thirty deaths a year is a small number until one of them is in your town.

What a death should change

A death does not change the epidemiology. It does change what the public is owed. Four things would help, and none requires reopening a fight with anyone.

First, the county should publish the fourth sequencing result when it arrives and say whether the person who died is counted among the confirmed or the suspect cases, to the extent the family permits.

Second, the county should write and publish a final outbreak report: what was sampled, where and on what dates; what could not be tested and why; and what the interviews showed about the corn cups, the hay, the pumpkins and the non-potable water. A strain the county calls unique came from somewhere.

Third, the California Department of Public Health should review the file. A fatal O157 outbreak with three children in kidney failure and no identified vehicle is a reasonable thing for a state to look at twice.

Fourth, the county should say what it will ask of seasonal farm attractions before next October, including potable water, handwashing stations, and how food is served to as many as a thousand visitors a day.

About the farm

Co-owner Shawn Callaway told The Tribune last week that he and his wife are devastated, that safety has always been the farm’s priority, and that the only link he knows of among the confirmed cases is that they visited Brookshire Farms. I take him at his word on all three. No one opens a pumpkin patch expecting this. The last of those statements is also the county’s finding, and it is the reason the remaining questions deserve answers.

For families who visited

Anyone who visited between October 16 and 26 and became ill should tell their doctor and the county health department, even now. The California Department of Public Health describes the symptoms: stomach cramps and diarrhea, often bloody. In a child who has had diarrhea, decreased urination, unusual paleness or extreme tiredness are warning signs of HUS and call for emergency care. E. coli O157 can also spread within a household, so careful handwashing matters when someone at home is sick.

Marler Clark represents two families sickened in this outbreak.

On November 10, 2026, the Will County Health Department announced the findings of its investigation into Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) infections among visitors to Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm in Homer Glen, Illinois. Whole genome sequencing found that bacteria collected from a baby goat in the farm’s petting zoo are closely related to the bacteria collected from the people who became sick.

That answers the question I raised on October 27, when the animal samples had just gone to the state laboratory. Marler Clark is investigating this outbreak on behalf of the family of a child who was sickened.

The numbers as of this update

  • Seven laboratory-confirmed STEC cases, up from five. The county identified the two additional cases after reviewing survey responses and laboratory results.
  • 159 probable cases, drawn from 270 people who answered the county’s confidential health survey after visiting the farm and developing symptoms. A probable case had a link to the farm and specific symptoms for a set length of time, but no laboratory test.
  • 166 confirmed and probable cases in all.
  • Samples from several petting zoo animals tested positive for STEC. One baby goat carried bacteria closely related to the human cases.
  • The county reviewed the farm’s food service operations and did not identify any concerns.

What the genetic match means

Whole genome sequencing compares the DNA of bacteria from different sources. The county reported two results. First, the bacteria from the sick people were closely related to each other, which points to a common source. Second, the bacteria from one baby goat were closely related to the bacteria from those people. Sean Conners, the county’s Director of Environmental Health, said the farm’s cooperation helped “identify a likely source of the outbreak.”

In a petting zoo investigation, that is about as strong as the evidence gets. It is also not a result anyone could count on. The national Compendium of Measures to Prevent Disease Associated with Animals in Public Settings has long cautioned that animals shed these pathogens intermittently, which is why testing animals is not a reliable way to clear an exhibit. The county’s survey covered visits on or after September 29, and the animals were sampled in late October. Finding the outbreak strain in an animal weeks after the first exposures is a credit to the people who did the sampling and the sequencing.

The signs and the sinks were there, and 166 people still got sick

The county confirmed that the farm had signs at the entrance and exit of the petting zoo about hand washing, about not eating around the animals, and about leaving strollers and wagons outside. Handwashing stations were at the exit. I take the county at its word, and the farm deserves credit for closing the petting zoo voluntarily and arranging for a veterinarian to sample its animals.

That is also the hard lesson of this outbreak. The farm had the items on the standard checklist, and the count still reached seven confirmed and 159 probable. The Compendium explains why signs and sinks are necessary but not sufficient. The prevalence of these pathogens is often higher in young animals, and young animals are what petting zoos exhibit. Transmission has also been tied to contaminated bedding, flooring, barriers, clothing and shoes, which means a child does not have to touch the goat to be exposed.

A sign does not wash a four-year-old’s hands. The county says it will work with Bengtson’s and other petting zoo operators on additional ways to educate visitors. I would ask every operator and every health department to go further before next fall and read the current Compendium against their own layout: who stands at the exit and sends each family to the sink, how young children are supervised inside the pen, and whether the youngest animals belong in a hands-on exhibit for the youngest children at all.

What the county has not yet said

  • Which STEC caused the outbreak. The release does not give a serotype.
  • How many of the seven confirmed cases were hospitalized and whether any developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). As of October 26, four of the first five had been hospitalized.
  • The ages and illness onset dates of the two newly confirmed cases, and the range of visit dates among the 166.
  • What has been done with the animals that tested positive, and under what conditions the petting zoo would reopen.

The county has been more open than most. It published its laboratory findings, and it published a probable case count, which many agencies never do. I asked on October 27 that the results go on the county’s website, and they did. The remaining details belong there too, because the next operator should be able to read the whole file.

If you visited Bengtson’s and got sick

According to the county, symptoms of STEC infection can begin one to ten days after exposure and most often appear within three to four days. They include severe stomach cramps, diarrhea that may be bloody, vomiting, and a low fever or none. Children under five are at the greatest risk of HUS, which can damage the kidneys. Anyone with bloody diarrhea, signs of dehydration or other severe symptoms should get medical attention promptly and ask for a stool test. The county and the Illinois Department of Public Health are continuing to monitor for additional cases.

Questions and answers

How many people are sick in the Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm E. coli outbreak?

Seven laboratory-confirmed cases and 159 probable cases as of November 10, 2026, according to the Will County Health Department.

Was the source found?

Whole genome sequencing found a close genetic match between bacteria from confirmed human cases and bacteria from a baby goat in the farm’s petting zoo. The county calls it a likely source.

Was food at the farm involved?

The county reviewed the farm’s food service operations and did not identify any concerns.

Is the petting zoo open?

The farm closed the petting zoo voluntarily when the county first contacted it. The county’s findings release does not say whether or when it will reopen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nobody campaigns for E. coli

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

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

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

We are going blind on purpose

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

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

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

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

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

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

The chainsaw at FDA

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

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

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

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

Chicken still makes people sick

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

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

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

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

Babies are not supposed to get botulism from formula

Here is the example that keeps me up at night.

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

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

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

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

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

Close the GRAS loophole, for real

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

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

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

Food security and food safety are the same fight

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

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

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

Hearings are cheap, and they work

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

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

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

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

The other side’s case

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

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

The bottom line

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

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

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

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

Sources

In the span of five days, CDC closed two multistate sprout outbreaks. On November 4 it was broccoli sprouts. On November 9 it was alfalfa sprouts.

Between them: 111 people sick in 19 states. Nine hospitalized. No deaths, thankfully.

CDC says the two outbreaks were not related. Different growers, different seeds, different bugs, different parts of the country. And yet they are the same story. In both, the contaminated seed lot was the source. In both, that seed was sold online to people sprouting at home. And in both, almost everyone was already sick before the first recall.

CDC posted final onset and location data for each outbreak. I downloaded all four files and ran the numbers. Here is what they show.

 Alfalfa sproutsBroccoli sprouts
GrowerEverything Sprouts (Minneapolis, MN)Evergreen Fresh Sprouts (Moyie Springs, ID)
PathogensE. coli O26:H11, O103:H25, O168:H8; Salmonella AgonaSalmonella Bovismorbificans
Sick7734
States166
Hospitalized6 of 69 (9%)3 of 34 (9%)
Deaths00
Illness onsetsMay 31 – Oct. 19July 7 – Sept. 11
Grower recallAug. 22Sept. 4
Sick before recall72 of 7732 of 34
Seed lotSAL2-24JBW4105 (imported from New Zealand)
Outbreak declared overNov. 9Nov. 4

Sources: CDC and FDA final outbreak notices and CDC onset and location data (Nov. 4 and Nov. 9, 2026).

The alfalfa outbreak: 77 sick, four pathogens

This one was messy from the start. Three strains of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli and one strain of Salmonella Agona, all traced to alfalfa sprouts from Everything Sprouts of Minneapolis. According to CDC’s final update, 64 people had E. coli only, 10 had Salmonella only, and 3 had both.

Patients ranged from 12 to 94 years old, median 38. Seventy-seven percent were women. Of 52 people interviewed, 41 (79 percent) ate sprouts, and 36 named alfalfa. In CDC’s FoodNet survey, only 8.7 percent of healthy people report eating any sprouts in a week.

All 13 Salmonella patients had strains predicted to resist three or more antibiotics, including azithromycin. Most people recover without antibiotics. The ones who need them may not get a drug that works on the first try.

When FDA and CDC first announced the outbreak on August 21, they counted 55 people in 15 states. The final count grew by 40 percent, but don’t read that as new infections after the warning. Most of it was the lab catching up.

Timing. The onset data shows 56 of the 77 people got sick in July. By August 20, when the Minnesota and Wisconsin health departments went public, 72 were already sick. Everything Sprouts recalled its alfalfa sproutson August 22 and added a radish mix on August 28.

After the recall. Five people got sick after August 22: on August 25, 27 and 28, September 9 and October 19. The first three fit sprouts bought before the recall. The last two don’t. The recalled sprouts were distributed through August 21, and nobody eats August sprouts in October. CDC doesn’t explain those two cases.

Geography. Minnesota (29) and Wisconsin (27) accounted for 73 percent of the cases, which matches where the sprouts were shipped. The other 21 people lived in 14 states from Florida to Washington. Some were surely travelers. CDC and FDA haven’t said how the rest were exposed.

The grower’s record. In March 2025, FDA sent Everything Sprouts a warning letter over what it called serious violations of the Produce Safety Rule, including, according to AP, a leaking roof dripping onto bean sprouts. During the outbreak, the company said its daily tests were negative. CDC’s final word, though, points upstream: the alfalfa seed lot “may have been contaminated with multiple pathogens.”

The broccoli outbreak: 34 sick, one clear chain

This was a cleaner investigation, and a model for how it should work. One uncommon serotype, Salmonella Bovismorbificans. Patients aged 2 to 87, median 52. Of 30 people interviewed, 29 (97 percent) ate sprouts or microgreens; 25 named broccoli sprouts and one ate a microgreen mix.

And the bug was found at every step. Montana pulled an unopened package of Evergreen broccoli sprouts from a sick person’s home. Washington tested sprouts from a food co-op and another patient’s home. FDA tested seed from the domestic seed supplier. Every sample matched the outbreak strain by whole genome sequencing. Seed to sprout to package to patient.

Timing. The onset data shows 27 of 34 people got sick in August, with the worst day on August 19. Evergreen Fresh Sprouts recalled its broccoli sprouts on September 4. By then, 32 of the 34 were sick. The last two, on September 8 and 11, fit packages bought before the recall, which covered expiration dates through September 16.

FDA tied this outbreak to “broccoli sprouts and microgreens.” That phrase matters. Seed sold for sprouting is also sold for microgreens, and microgreen growers range from big greenhouses to someone with trays in the garage selling at a farmers market. A seed recall has to reach every one of them. Unlike the alfalfa strains, though, nearly all of these bacteria, 32 of 34 patient samples and all five food samples, had no predicted antibiotic resistance.

Geography. Washington had 26 cases (76 percent) and Montana had four. Idaho, Minnesota, Oregon and Utah had one each.

The seed. FDA’s final update says the broccoli seed was imported from New Zealand and sold by a domestic supplier, which recalled lot W4105. Three downstream recalls followed: EAK Distribution (Home Grown seeds on Amazon), Eden Brothers, and Gardeners Basics, whose seed was sold on Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy and TikTok Shop.

The grower’s record. This is Evergreen’s third outbreak, after alfalfa and spicy sprouts in 2011 (25 sick) and clover sprouts in 2014 (19 sick). Seventy-eight people across three outbreaks. This time, though, the evidence points squarely at the seed.

What the two outbreaks have in common

The seed was the source. Sprout seeds go into warm water and sit for days. That is perfect for sprouting and perfect for growing bacteria. If the pathogen is in or on the seed, the grower can do a lot right and still ship contaminated sprouts. A clean finished-product test is not a clean seed.

The seed went everywhere. Seed does not spoil in a week. Alfalfa lot SAL2-24JB was recalled by the supplier to Everything Sprouts and by Berlin Seeds, and Todd’s Seeds sold it online, including on Amazon, from January into May. Broccoli lot W4105 ended up under at least three consumer brands sold on half a dozen online marketplaces. One recalled bag is marked “Packed for 2027.” FDA itself warns that recalled seeds “have a long shelf life.”

That is the best explanation I can think of for the September and October alfalfa cases, and for the scattered cases in Minnesota and Utah in the broccoli outbreak. A home sprouter with a bag of seed bought online is the one person a restaurant traceback never finds and a grower’s recall never reaches. CDC hasn’t confirmed that. It should tell us.

The recall came after the outbreak. Combined, 104 of 111 people were sick before either grower recalled anything. That is not a criticism of the epidemiologists in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington and Montana. They found these outbreaks fast. It is how sprouts work. Shelf life is measured in days. By the time a lab confirms an outbreak, the sprouts have been eaten.

Restaurants and co-ops. Seven illness clusters in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and restaurant traceback, led investigators to Everything Sprouts. Broccoli sprouts were found at a Washington food co-op. Plates and bulk bins don’t carry labels.

Names are missing. Neither FDA advisory names the seed supplier behind the implicated lot. For broccoli, we don’t know the New Zealand source either. Consumers get brand names, which helps. But who sold these seed lots, and where else they went, is not in the public record.

This keeps happening

These are not one-offs. In 2016, alfalfa sprouts from Sprouts Extraordinaire sickened 30 people in nine states. In 2014, mung bean sprouts from Wonton Foods sickened 115. The alfalfa outbreak alone was the largest U.S. sprout outbreak since then. Add the broccoli outbreak and this summer nearly matched it.

We have had seed disinfection guidance for more than 25 years and a Produce Safety Rule with a sprout-specific section for nearly a decade. Sprouts still make people sick, year after year.

What should happen now

  • Check your pantry. If you sprout at home, compare your seed with the Berlin Seeds, Todd’s Seeds, Home Grown, Eden Brothers and Gardeners Basics recall notices. If it matches, throw it out and sanitize the jar.
  • Name the seed suppliers. FDA should name who sold lots SAL2-24JB and W4105, the New Zealand source of the broccoli seed, and where else both lots went.
  • Publish the full traceback. Tell us how the 21 alfalfa patients outside Minnesota and Wisconsin were exposed, and where the late-onset patients got their sprouts.
  • Warn before people eat. I have circulated a citizen petition asking FDA to require a warning on raw and lightly cooked sprouts, including at restaurants. Seed sold for sprouting should carry one too.
  • Protect high-risk eaters. If you are pregnant, very young, over 65 or have a weakened immune system, skip raw sprouts. Cook sprouts until steaming hot.

Two outbreaks are over. As long as those seeds are sitting in somebody’s cupboard, I wouldn’t call the problem solved.

Sources

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

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

Who he was

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

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

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

Food safety culture

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

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

Kansas and Brisbane

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

Doug and me

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

Stepping away

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

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

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

Peace and love, Doug.

First, an apology.

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

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

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

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

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

Why petitions at all

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

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

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

1. Test infant formula for botulism

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

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

The petition asks FDA to:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tell that to the next family.

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

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

3. Tell people where the recalled food went

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

The petition asks FDA to:

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

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

4. Let FDA take a sample where the contamination started

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

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

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

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

5. Salmonella in raw poultry

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

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

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

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

6. Put a warning label on raw sprouts

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

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

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

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

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

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

The petition asks for:

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

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

What happens next

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

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

Sources

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