Two federal pages carry the running account of what is making Americans sick right now: FDA’s Investigations of Foodborne Illness Outbreaks table and USDA’s Outbreak Investigations: Response table at the Food Safety and Inspection Service. I wrote them up on August 8, August 12 and September 2. Here is where they stand after FDA’s September 25 update.

FDA’s table carries seventeen investigations in its Active section. Add the case counts the agency publishes on the individual advisories and the table describes 14,197 illnesses, 680 hospitalizations where a number is given, and two deaths, both from Cyclospora in Michigan. Ten of the seventeen are ongoing; seven are files where the outbreak is over and FDA still calls the investigation active. Ten name no food, and those ten carry 645 sick people. Five are Cyclospora, and those five carry 13,195 of the 14,197, 93 percent of the table, nearly all of it the iceberg lettuce outbreak CDC closed on September 11. Nine of the seventeen show no on-site inspection.

USDA’s table lists four investigations for 2026. One is active. It is the same E. coli O157:H7 file FDA posted on September 23 with 25 sick and no food named.

Seven closed, seven opened

Since August 12, FDA has moved seven files to its closed list: frozen blueberries (17 sick, closed September 23), romaine lettuce (14, closed September 10 with no grower or processor named), the requesón Listeria outbreakthat killed one person (15 sick, closed September 16), the Ayco Farms cantaloupe file (70) and the moringa leaf powder file (131), whose advisory called FDA’s investigation complete on July 22, 63 days before the table said closed. Two small Cyclospora files from the August table, #1375 with eight sick and #1381 with two, are on neither list today.

Seven files took their places: Salmonella I 4,[5],12:i:- (43 sick, no food named); the alfalfa sprout file, which now carries multiple E. coli strains and Salmonella Agona (55 sick in 15 states); Salmonella Newport (116, no food named); Salmonella Bovismorbificans in Evergreen Fresh Sprouts broccoli sprouts (32 sick in six states); the joint O157 file (25); a Listeria file (40, no food named); and, on September 25, E. coli O26:H11 in Sierra Nevada Graziers raw milk cheese: 13 sick in nine states, eight hospitalized, three with HUS.

The total nearly doubled from 7,324 for one reason: the iceberg lettuce count went from 6,358 to 12,883 before CDC closed it. Take Cyclospora out and the other twelve files hold 1,002 people.

The table as it stands

Ref. #	Pathogen	Food named	Sick	Outbreak	Inspected on site
1419	E. coli O26:H11	Raw milk cheese	13	Ongoing
1421	E. coli O157:H7 (USDA 2026-04)	Not yet identified	25	Ongoing
1417	Listeria monocytogenes	Not yet identified	40	Ongoing
1411	Salmonella Bovismorbificans	Broccoli sprouts	32	Ongoing
1403	Salmonella Newport	Not yet identified	116	Ongoing
1394	E. coli (multiple) and Salmonella Agona	Alfalfa sprouts	55	Ongoing	Yes
1402	Salmonella I 4,[5],12:i:-	Not yet identified	43	Ongoing	Yes
1398	Cyclospora	Not yet identified	22	Ended
1392	Cyclospora	Not yet identified	234	Ended
1395	Salmonella Javiana	Jalapeño peppers	431	Ongoing	Yes
1379	Listeria monocytogenes	Not yet identified	10	Ongoing	Yes
1390	Cyclospora	Iceberg lettuce	12,883	Ended	Yes
1385	Cyclospora	Not yet identified	38	Ended
1384	Cyclospora	Not yet identified	18	Ended
1387	Salmonella Oranienburg	Not yet identified	99	Ongoing	Yes
1383	Clostridium botulinum	Powdered infant formula	4	Ended	Yes
1378	Salmonella Enteritidis	Eggs	134	Ended	Yes

Counts for the See Advisory rows come from each advisory’s Case Counts block as of September 29. Hospitalizations where published: raw milk cheese 8, broccoli sprouts 3, alfalfa sprouts 4, jalapeños 57, iceberg lettuce 570, infant formula 4, eggs 34.

The newest files are the emptiest

The five newest rows, posted between August 26 and September 25, carry 226 sick people between them, and not one shows an on-site inspection.

Salmonella Newport, #1403, was posted August 26 with 84 sick and no food named. It is 116 today. Traceback and sampling are marked. No inspection, no advisory, no CDC notice, thirty-four days in.

The two files posted September 23 are the thinnest: E. coli O157:H7, 25 sick, carrying FSIS reference 2026-04, and Listeria monocytogenes, 40 sick. Traceback on each. No states, no ages, no hospitalizations, no onset dates. CDC has posted a notice for neither. I wrote about the joint file last week.

The broccoli sprout file, #1411, shows a recall, traceback and sampling. No inspection is marked at Evergreen Fresh Sprouts, the Idaho grower that recalled the bags on September 4.

The Graziers row, posted September 25, is the sparest of all. It shows a recall and nothing else: no traceback, no inspection, no sampling, on an outbreak in which nine of nine people interviewed ate the cheese, eight of thirteen were hospitalized, three developed HUS and CDC puts the median age at five. FDA says its investigation into the source of contamination is ongoing. FDA’s What’s New dates the recall September 25; its advisory says September 24.

The column records what has been initiated as of the stamp, and an inspection can begin after it. Eight rows show one; nothing posted after August 19 does.

Complete on one page, active on the other

FDA’s egg advisory was updated September 3. The final count is 134 sick, 34 hospitalized, 18 states, with illnesses from November 21, 2025, to August 12, 2026, a nine-month outbreak. FDA inspected Midwest Poultry Services in Texas, and three environmental samples matched the outbreak strain. Then this sentence: FDA’s outbreak investigation is complete. Twenty-two days later, at the September 25 stamp, the table still lists #1378 as Active.

The close also leaves a question FDA raised in July. On July 24 the agency wrote that Midwest Poultry does not account for all the illnesses in this outbreak. The September 3 update calls the company a likely source, confirms recalled eggs reached six states, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, and lists sick people in eighteen. Twelve states have cases and no confirmed egg. Whether another source was ever found, the close does not say.

The lag is not consistent. The moringa file went 63 days between its advisory saying complete and the table saying closed; the blueberry file went two. The infant formula file at least explains itself: the outbreak investigation has ended, and the root-cause investigation into the Organic West Milk and Dairy Farmers of America supply chain it shares with the 2025 ByHeart outbreak continues. The iceberg lettuce advisory, untouched since September 11, says samples from the Mexican inspections are pending analysis. And the jalapeño advisory, 431 sick, 57 hospitalized, 32 states, still reads Ongoing on a page that has not moved since August 21, for an outbreak whose last illness began August 2.

USDA’s table

FSIS says it posts an investigation when there is compelling evidence that a meat, poultry or egg product is the source, and that it updates the table at least weekly. For 2026 it lists four. Three are closed: Listeria in retail-sliced headcheese in May, with a public health alert and an Illinois notice; E. coli O157:H7 in beef kofta served at The Kebab Shop in May, with a public health alert and a California notice; and Salmonella Enteritidis in chicken, listed as suspect, at the Broome County Correctional Facility in New York in June.

The fourth, 2026-04, is the first active row USDA has carried all year. Product: Unknown. Note: FSIS and FDA are currently investigating this outbreak. It is the one place the two federal tables point at each other, and neither says what the food is.

FSIS ref.	Posted	Pathogen	Product	Active
2026-04	September	E. coli O157:H7	Unknown (FDA #1421)	Yes
2026-03	June	SalmonellaEnteritidis	Chicken (suspect), Broome County Correctional Facility	No
2026-02	May	E. coli O157:H7	Beef kofta, The Kebab Shop	No
2026-01	May	Listeria monocytogenes	Retail-sliced headcheese	No

CDC’s count

CDC’s weekly page does not name investigations; it counts them. Its September 23 update listed 32 active multistate investigations: 20 Salmonella, six E. coli, five Listeria and one Campylobacter. FDA’s ten unnamed files are presumably among them; nobody outside the agencies can say which.

Marler Clark represents people sickened in the iceberg lettuce, Kebab Shop kofta and moringa outbreaks, the family of a child who developed HUS in the Graziers outbreak, and families in the Nara and ByHeart infant formula outbreaks.

Seventeen open. Ten with no food. Nine with no inspection, including all five files posted since August 26. One file complete on its own advisory for twenty-six days and active on the table. And the only meat investigation of the year is a file whose product line reads Unknown. The pages are public. I will keep reading them.