A tip of the pen to Gina Shaw, whose piece in the October issue of Infectious Disease Special Edition, “Invaders From Planet Lettuce,” asks the right question: how did produce become the vehicle that makes so many of us sick? It is the clearest explanation I have read of why this summer’s Cyclospora season
Saturday, October 17, 2026
Last Saturday’s edition closed on a seed lot with no named supplier, a chicken wrap outbreak with no brand, and 619 sick on FDA’s files with no food named. This week the wrap file reached 50 and the first brand on the record came from a federal complaint, not an agency
Paris Martineau is an investigative reporter at Consumer Reports, and on October 9 she published the best post-mortem anyone has written on the 2026 Cyclospora outbreak: The Cyclospora Outbreak Is Over. The Gaps It Exposed Are Not. Read it. Consumer Reports spent the hours after the recall notice calling companies to decode a list written
Saturday, October 10, 2026
Last Saturday’s edition closed on three files shut without a cause and eleven open files carrying 675 sick with no food named. This week FDA matched the broccoli sprout outbreak to a seed lot, three seed brands recalled it from five online marketplaces, and the supplier is still unnamed; the E.
Gallup released new polling today and the numbers should make everyone in government and the food industry very uncomfortable.
Only 65% of Americans are now very or somewhat confident that food sold in grocery stores is safe to eat. That is the lowest Gallup has ever recorded, down from 73% last year and 81% in
On October 5, 2026, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a policy statement in Pediatrics calling for a ban on the sale and distribution of raw milk and raw milk products, including raw milk cheeses, and telling pregnant people and children to consume only pasteurized dairy. It arrived while 13 people in nine states
On October 2, 2026, FDA closed its investigation of the largest multistate Cyclospora outbreak on record. FDA said the two positive environmental samples – one from a tank of outgoing wastewater at the Taylor Farms de Mexico processing plant, one from a drainage ditch at a grower in the traceback – add to the strong
In September 2006, bagged baby spinach grown in California’s Salinas Valley sickened over 200 people with E. coli O157:H7 and killed five of them. For a few weeks you could not give spinach away. Twenty years later, almost to the month, FDA closed its investigation into the largest Cyclospora outbreak in American history: 12,883 confirmed
About a week 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, and the other asking for a warning statement on raw and lightly cooked sprouts. I asked for comments and corrections. You delivered.
Many of
On Saturday, September 26, 2026, G. L. Mezzetta Inc. of American Canyon, California, announced a recall of one lot of Mezzetta Golden Greek Peperoncini, Medium Heat, in 32-ounce glass jars: SKU 10106328, Lot 720106. FDA posted the company’s announcement the same day under a headline that ends “Due to Presence of Pest Contaminant in the
