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
As I said the Guardian last week:
But for some advocates like Marler, whose law firm handles cases of victims who may be severely injured or even killed by food contamination, the delays are nothing short of inconceivable.
The traceability rule “allows product to get off the market faster so less people get sick
As of Saturday, August 22, 2026, four foodborne outbreaks are running at once and every one of them is still open. The Cyclospora outbreak linked to recalled Taylor Farms de Mexico iceberg lettuce stands at 10,930 illnesses in seventeen states, with a fifty-state count of 31,972. The Salmonella Javiana outbreak traced to Sinaloa jalapeños
As of Thursday, August 20, 2026, CDC counts 10,930 people sick in the federal Cyclospora outbreak traced to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico, at least 454 of them hospitalized, two dead, across seventeen states, with illness onsets running from June 14 through August 11. On its separate surveillance page the agency counts 15,716
Saturday, August 22, 2026
This is my seventh Weekend Wrap-Up. Last Saturday this column was called On Tuesday They Said the Food Supply Was the Safest in the World and the Outbreak Was Contained. By Thursday Night the Government’s Own Outbreak Had Grown by Half. This week the message stayed the same and the
