Every Wednesday I read three government pages in a row. Tonight they told three different stories, and the difference between them is the most useful thing on any of them.
The CDC page: forty
CDC updated its current outbreaks page today. The agency does not name the investigations, only counts them by germ: two Campylobacter, seven E. coli, seven Listeria and twenty-four Salmonella. That is forty active multistate investigations. CDC says it typically coordinates between 17 and 40 at any given time, so forty is the top of the range the agency itself calls normal. None of the forty is described. There is no product, no state list, no case count. There is a number, and a note that some investigations become public notices and most do not.
The FDA page: nineteen rows, seven with no food named
FDA’s CORE investigations table was last modified August 26 and has not had its Wednesday refresh as I write this. It carries nineteen rows marked Active. Thirteen are ongoing and six are outbreaks FDA says have ended but has not closed out. Seven of the thirteen ongoing investigations have no product named, and together they account for 486 reported illnesses.
Two of those seven deserve a closer look. Salmonella Newport, reference 1403, was posted August 26 with 84 cases, a blank product column, traceback initiated, and no inspection and no sampling. Salmonella Oranienburg, reference 1387, was posted July 8, sits at 99 cases, and after eight weeks still shows traceback only, with neither an inspection nor a sample collected. Nearly 200 people are sick across those two files and the public has not been told what to avoid.
The row that did move is the sprout file, reference 1394. FDA merged what had been two anonymous E. coli rows, O103:H25 and O26:H11, into a single incident after CDC found four people infected at the same time with three E. coli strains and Salmonella Agona. The advisory names alfalfa sprouts distributed by Everything Sprouts, LLC of Minneapolis, and the company’s recall was added August 24. That is the only row on the table where FDA has initiated all three of traceback, inspection and sampling and also has a recall in hand.
The remaining Cyclospora rows crept: reference 1398 from 17 to 22, reference 1392 from 201 to 203, reference 1385 from 27 to 28. The iceberg lettuce advisory has not been touched since August 20. The requesón Listeria outbreak, the one on this table with a death, is now marked ended, with final information posted August 26.
The USDA page: three for the year, all closed
The FSIS outbreak investigations page lists three investigations for all of 2026, and the Active column says No on every one. In May, Listeria in retail-sliced headcheese, with a public health alert and an Illinois notice. In May, E. coli O157:H7 in beef kofta served at The Kebab Shop, with a public health alert and a California notice. In June, Salmonella Enteritidis in suspected chicken at the Broome County Correctional Facility in New York. That is the whole list. Nothing is open. Marler Clark represents people sickened in the Kebab Shop outbreak, which I note here so you can weigh it.
In fairness, FSIS explains the emptiness. It posts an investigation only when the evidence points to a product it regulates, and a meat or poultry item that got sick from an FDA-regulated ingredient, as happened with the jalapeño public health alert in August, never appears on this table at all. The page describes what gets posted, not the whole food supply.
Even with that caveat, the contrast holds. Here is what the three pages say tonight, side by side.
| Agency | Open files | Product not yet named | Oldest open unnamed cluster |
| CDC | 40 active multistate: Salmonella 24, E. coli 7, Listeria 7, Campylobacter 2 | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| FDA CORE | 19 rows; 13 ongoing, 6 ended | 7 of the 13 ongoing, carrying 486 illnesses | Salmonella Oranienburg, 99 sick, posted July 8, traceback only |
| USDA FSIS | 3 for all of 2026; 0 active | 0 | None |
What the meat table used to look like
I built a law practice on the meat table. From the 1993 Jack in the Box outbreak through the 2002 ConAgra recall, hamburger E. coli O157:H7 cases were the core of what this firm did. They are now close to zero for us. That did not happen by accident. In 1994, USDA declared E. coli O157:H7 an adulterant in raw ground beef. In 1996, the Pathogen Reduction and HACCP rule made every slaughter and processing plant write down its hazards and prove it controlled them, under an inspector who was in the building. In 2011, the agency extended the adulterant rule to six more Shiga toxin-producing serogroups. Test-and-hold followed. The industry fought most of it, then built its operations around it, and the hamburger cases went away. It is the best thing that has happened in food safety in my lifetime, and the empty FSIS page is what it looks like from the outside.
Which is why last Friday matters
On August 28, the President posted on Truth Social that he was authorizing legal documents to be drawn to give farmers and ranchers the right to process their own food, calling the four largest beef processors a monopoly. The post came two days after a radio host told him that inspections are insane and regulations are killing ranchers. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said announcements would start Monday, including waiving red tape in processing, expanding the ability to sell across state lines, and support for small processors, and on Tuesday said a further announcement on labeling and cross-state sales would come later this week. As of this evening, no rule, order or bill text has been published, and existing federal inspection requirements remain in effect.
The reaction from the people who actually run the meat business was quick. The Meat Institute warned that uninspected meat reaching consumers could damage the country’s food safety reputation, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said weakening federal inspection and food safety standards is not the answer. Representative Thomas Massie, who has spent years pushing the PRIME Act to loosen custom-slaughter rules, called the post a nothing-burger because farmers can already process their own animals; what they cannot do is sell that meat without inspection.
I have no quarrel with more regional processing capacity. Ranchers hauling cattle hundreds of miles because four companies own the plants is a real problem, and Congress has been funding small processors for five years. The way to get there is more inspected plants, more state programs recognized as equivalent to federal inspection, and more inspectors, not fewer. What cannot be on the table is the inspector. The FSIS page is empty because someone is standing in every plant that sells meat across state lines. Take that away and the page fills back up, and I know exactly what it fills up with, because I have the files from 1993 to 2002.
The bottom line
CDC is working forty investigations and will not say what they are. FDA has seven open files with no food named and nearly 500 people in them, including a 99-case Salmonella cluster that has gone eight weeks without an inspection or a sample. USDA has nothing open at all. One of those three agencies has a system that works, and it is the one the President was asked last week to loosen. Whatever gets announced this week, the right question for Secretary Rollins is simple: will every animal sold as meat still be slaughtered under inspection? If the answer is yes, the plan deserves a hearing. If the answer is anything else, look at the FSIS page tonight, because it will not look like that for long.
Sources: CDC current outbreaks (updated September 2, 2026); FDA CORE investigations table (modified August 26, 2026); FSIS outbreak investigations; CNN, Agri-Pulse and Iowa Capital Dispatch on the August 28 post and the Secretary’s follow-up.
Recent Comments