\n\n

The State of California published two documents on Friday, September 11, 2026. One is a consumer warning telling Californians not to eat, serve or sell Happy Hens brand eggs (CDPH release NR26-029). The other is the thing this outbreak has gone six weeks without: a list of the places that sold them. Forty-one locations, every one of them in San Diego County. The deli at the center of the outbreak is on it.

What the state said

As of September 8, 2026, twenty-three California residents are part of this outbreak. Seven were hospitalized. No deaths. Illness onsets run from June 21 through August 16, and CDPH calls the outbreak ongoing, which means more cases may still be identified. FDA inspected the Happy Hens farm from August 17 to 20 and collected environmental samples; two from poultry housing sites were positive for Salmonella Enteritidis, and whole genome sequencing matched them to the strain in the sick. San Diego County said the same thing on September 4. What is new is the last sentence: on September 8, 2026, Happy Hens voluntarily recalled its eggs.

The recall is three days old, and nobody said so

Tuesday to Thursday, the recall existed and the public did not know. The County published nothing. The farm announced nothing. As of tonight, the farm’s website still carries no notice of it. I posted this morning that there was still no recall. I was working from the whole public record, and the whole public record was wrong by three days. Phyllis Entis had the same reading tonight at eFoodAlert, and she put the number on it: the recall came six weeks after the first outbreak announcement.

Now read the date codes

The recall covers in-shell organic eggs, all grades and sizes, egg handler code CA-0677, in three lots: 223, sell by September 10; 226, sell by September 13; and 237, sell by September 24. Consumer packs of one dozen, eighteen, twenty-count flats and thirty-count flats, plus fifteen-dozen foodservice cases.

Egg lot codes are Julian pack dates. 2026 is not a leap year, so code 223 is August 11, code 226 is August 14, and code 237 is August 25. Check that against the sell-by dates printed next to them: each one falls exactly thirty days after the pack date I just calculated. The arithmetic closes on itself, which is how you know the reading is right.

The illnesses in this outbreak began on June 21 and the most recent was detected on August 16. The recalled eggs were packed on August 11, August 14 and August 25. Two of those codes postdate all but the last five days of the outbreak. One postdates the outbreak entirely. What has been recalled is the product still sitting inside its sell-by window — shelf stock. The June and July cartons that actually made people sick are not covered, because their sell-by dates passed weeks ago.

That is not a complaint about the codes. It is the whole argument for timeliness. A recall issued in early August would have reached the eggs that were hurting people. A recall issued on September 8 reaches the eggs that are left.

The forty-one locations

This is CDPH’s retail distribution list, stamped UPDATED: 9/11/2026. Phone numbers for each location are in the state’s PDF.

Retailer Address City Zip
Boney’s Bayside 155 Orange Ave Coronado 92118
Carlsbad Ranch Market 6120 Paseo Del Norte Q1 Carlsbad 92011
Cream of the Crop 2009 S Coast Hwy Oceanside 92054
Farm Fresh to You (delivery service) Escondido Escondido 92029
Fox Point Farms 1200 Fox Point Farms Lane Encinitas 92024
Frazier Farms La Mesa 8401 Fletcher Pkwy La Mesa 91942
Frazier Oceanside 1820 Oceanside Blvd Oceanside 92054
Frazier Vista 225 Vista Village Dr Vista 92083
Golden Door Country Store 314 Deer Springs Road San Marcos 92069
Grocery Outlet Oceanside 1527 Mission Ave Oceanside 92058
Grocery Outlet Pt Loma 3948 W Point Loma Blvd San Diego 92110
Grocery Outlet San Marcos 125 S Rancho Santa Fe Rd San Marcos 92078
Grocery Outlet San Ysidro 444 E San Ysidro Blvd San Ysidro 92173
Happy Hens (farm store) 2176 Ramona St. Ramona 92065
Harvest Ranch 162 S Rancho Santa Fe Rd Encinitas 92024
Jensens 955 Catalina Blvd San Diego 92106
Jimbos 4S 10511 4S Commons Dr Ste 155 San Diego 92127
Jimbos Carlsbad 1923 Calle Barcelona Carlsbad 92009
Jimbos Del Mar 12853 El Camino Real San Diego 92130
Jimbos Escondido 1633 S Centre City Pkwy Escondido 92025
Lofty Carlsbad 2742 State St Carlsbad 92008
Lofty Encinitas 90 N Coast Hwy 101 Ste 214 Encinitas 92024
Lofty La Costa 7740 El Camino Real Unit A Carlsbad 92009
Lofty Little Italy 444 W Cedar St San Diego 92101
Lofty Solana 132 S Cedros Ave Solana Beach 92075
Lucky Bolt 10920 Roselle St Ste 105 San Diego 92121
Nectarine Grove 948 N Coast Hwy 101 Encinitas 92024
Nectarine Grove DM 2720 Via De La Valle Ste E110 Del Mar 92014
Origins Grocer (South Park) 2361 30th Street San Diego 92104
Peoples 4765 Voltaire St San Diego 92107
Perennial Pastures 3427 N Twin Oaks Valley Rd San Marcos 92069
RFN (Ramona Family Naturals) 325 6th St Ramona 92065
Sand and Straw 629 Mar Vista Dr Vista 92081
Trattoria Positano 2171 San Elijo Ave Cardiff 92007
Valley Farm Del Mar 1555 Camino Del Mar Space #107 Del Mar 92014
Valley Farm La Jolla 6902 La Jolla Blvd La Jolla 92037
Valley Farm Spring Valley 9040 Campo Rd Spring Valley 91977
Whole Foods Del Mar 2600 Via De La Valle Ste 100 Del Mar 92014
Whole Foods Hillcrest 711 University Ave San Diego 92103
Whole Foods La Jolla 8825 Villa La Jolla Dr La Jolla 92037
Windmill Farms 6386 Del Cerro Blvd San Diego 92120

Source: California Department of Public Health, Food and Drug Branch, Recall: Happy Hens retail distribution list, updated September 11, 2026.

Three things worth noticing about that list

First, the geography does not match the warning. CDPH’s own release says these eggs went to restaurants, grocery stores and farmers markets in Southern California and the Central Coast. Every address on the list is in San Diego County. There is no Orange County entry, no Los Angeles entry and nothing north of there. Either the distribution was narrower than the release describes, or the list is not finished. It is stamped with an update date, which is how the state marks a list it expects to add to — it did the same thing in the Vega Farms egg recall last December. Anyone outside the county should read this as incomplete, not as clearance.

Second, one entry on the list has no shelf to clear. Farm Fresh to You is a home-delivery service, listed out of Escondido with an 800 number. A grocery store can pull a case in the morning. A delivery box is already in somebody’s kitchen, and the only way to reach it is to call the customer.

Third, and this is the limit of the document: the list says which locations received Happy Hens eggs. It does not say which of them received the three recalled codes, and it cannot tell a customer whether the carton they bought in July came from one of the two positive hen houses. RFN at 325 6th Street in Ramona is Ramona Family Naturals Market, the deli where this started. The farm’s own store in Ramona is on the list too.

Meanwhile, on the farm’s website

As of tonight, happy-hens.com carries no recall notice anywhere. The store locator is live and invites you to find the stores “currently carrying our exceptional eggs.” The online store is taking egg orders — nine egg listings with working Add to Cart buttons, from a $10.35 dozen to a thirty-count at $26.65, for pickup at the Ramona farm store.

The reel arguing that a genetic match is not proof because no egg was tested no longer appears in the Instagram feed embedded on the home page. I am not going to say it was deleted; an embedded feed rotates. What sits at the top of that feed tonight is a new post about the difference between cage-free, free-range and pasture-raised, and hens raised outdoors “the way God intended.” The reel asking, “Was the actual product ever tested?” is still up. The answer to that question, incidentally, is that the County said on September 4 that egg-sample results were pending. A week later, nobody has published them.

If you bought these eggs

Throw them away or take them back for a refund. Do not serve them. Wash and sanitize anything they touched with hot soapy water or run it through the dishwasher. If you find these eggs still for sale, the CDPH complaint hotline is (800) 495-3232.

If you got sick after eating eggs or anything made with raw egg — mayonnaise, aioli, Caesar dressing, hollandaise, a raw-egg protein drink — see a doctor and ask specifically for a stool culture. Keep the carton, or the receipt, or a photograph of either. And ask the laboratory or the health department to preserve your isolate. Whole genome sequencing of that isolate is what ties one person’s illness to everyone else’s in an outbreak, and isolates get discarded as a matter of routine.

Our firm represents seven people sickened in this outbreak.