CDC defines the cyclosporiasis season as May 1 through August 31, so by the government’s own calendar it ended today, Monday, August 31, 2026. It ends with FDA counting 11,458 people sick in the outbreak it attributes to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico, 495 of them hospitalized and two dead, in twenty states.
Saturday, August 29, 2026
This is my eighth Saturday column. Last Saturday it ran under a different name — Four Outbreaks, One Weekend — and it closed on the observation that in every one of those four, the piece of paper a person would need in order to protect themselves arrived late, arrived incomplete, or
Federal regulation requires powdered infant formula to be tested for two organisms before it reaches a store shelf: Salmonella and Cronobacter. It does not require testing for Clostridium botulinum. Fifty-two American infants have now been hospitalized with botulism across two formula outbreaks — 48 fed ByHeart formula beginning in 2025, four fed Nara
Six investigations defined the month. As of August 27, 2026, CDC counts 11,458 people sick with Cyclospora in twenty states from Taylor Farms de Mexico iceberg lettuce, 431 sick with Salmonella Javiana in thirty-two states from jalapeños distributed by Coast Citrus, 55 sick in fifteen states from Minnesota alfalfa sprouts carrying four different pathogens, fifteen
On August 11, the FDA published its proposed rule on Substances Generally Recognized as Safe, 91 FR 51834, Docket No. FDA-2025-N-3262, with comments due December 9, 2026. HHS announced it the day before as a landmark food policy reform. The fact sheet describes it simply: manufacturers would have to tell FDA when they decide
On June 23 and June 29, 2026, I wrote to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions about Clostridium botulinum in powdered infant formula — 48 hospitalized infants in the ByHeart outbreak, four more in the Nara Organics outbreak, and a federal rule that
I agree with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the thing he cares most about. The American diet is making people sick, ultra-processed food is a real driver of chronic disease, and whole food is better food. I have been arguing versions of that for years and I am not going to stop because it became
We Need Someone Who Reads 4,000 Pages of Medical Records and Finds the One That Matters.
Marler Clark represents people sickened by E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria, Cyclospora, Vibrio and botulism — from a single family to a thousand-plaintiff outbreak, tens of thousands of clients and over $850 million recovered since 1993.
Tamar Haspel makes the case against lettuce in the Washington Post this morning. It makes people sick, it takes land and water, we throw away roughly as much as we eat, and it delivers almost nothing nutritionally. Her illness numbers are real, and I went and found the paper behind them. Her conclusion is
Want to Put Us Out of Business? Come Help Us Try.
Marler Clark has been suing the companies that poison people since 1993 — since a nine-year-old girl named Brianne Kiner nearly died from a hamburger. Sixteen years later it was Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor paralyzed by a hamburger, whose case put the
