FDA Lists Sixteen Open Outbreak Investigations. Eight Name No Food, Two Are Still Marked Active After FDA Said It Was Done, and a Romaine E. coli File Closed Without Telling Anyone Who Grew the Lettuce

FDA’s CORE outbreak investigations table is the closest thing the public has to a running list of the foodborne illness outbreaks the agency is working. When I checked it this morning, September 16, it still carried a September 10 date. It lists sixteen active investigations. Add the case counts on the table to the counts on the outbreak pages it links to, and those sixteen files account for 14,246 illnesses and two deaths.

Almost all of that is one file. The Taylor Farms de Mexico iceberg lettuce Cyclospora outbreak, which CDC declared over on September 11, closed at 12,883 sick in 21 states, at least 570 hospitalized, and two deaths in Michigan. The other fifteen files carry 1,363 people. Here is what the table says about them, and what it does not.

The sixteen open files

Ref.	Posted	Pathogen	Food	Sick	Status	On site
1411	Sept 10	SalmonellaBovismorbificans	Sprouts (broccoli)	22*	Ongoing	No
1403	Aug 26	SalmonellaNewport	Not identified	109	Ongoing	No
1394	Aug 19	E. coli (3 strains) &Salmonella Agona	Alfalfa sprouts	55*	Ongoing	Yes
1402	Aug 12	Salmonella I 4,[5],12:i:-	Not identified	43	Ongoing	Yes
1398	Aug 5	Cyclospora	Not identified	22	Ongoing	No
1392	July 22	Cyclospora	Not identified	231	Ongoing	No
1395	July 22	Salmonella Javiana	Jalapeño peppers	431*	Ongoing	No
1379	July 22	Listeria monocytogenes	Not identified	9	Ongoing	Yes
1390	July 15	Cyclospora	Iceberg lettuce	12,883*	Ongoing	Yes
1385	July 8	Cyclospora	Not identified	38	Ongoing	No
1384	July 8	Cyclospora	Not identified	18	Ended	No
1387	July 8	SalmonellaOranienburg	Not identified	99	Ongoing	Yes
1389	July 6	E. coli O145:H28	Frozen blueberries	17*	Ongoing	Yes
1383	June 13	Clostridium botulinum	Powdered infant formula	4*	Ended	Yes
1378	June 10	SalmonellaEnteritidis	Eggs	134*	Ended	Yes
1358	Jan 14	SalmonellaTyphimurium, Newport, Richmond	Moringa leaf powder	131*	Ended	Yes

Table: FDA CORE active investigations as of the September 10 update. Status is FDA’s outbreak status column; every row is carried as an Active investigation. On site means the FDA Inspection Initiated column is checked. Counts marked * are rows where FDA’s table says See Advisory; the number comes from the linked outbreak page as of its latest update: Evergreen sprouts, alfalfa sprouts, jalapeños, iceberg lettuce (CDC final), frozen blueberries, infant formula, eggs and moringa.

I have written separately about the Nara formula outbreak and the frozen blueberries, and this post does not repeat that work.

Half the table names no food

Eight of the sixteen rows list the product as Not Yet Identified. Those eight files carry 569 sick people.

The largest is Salmonella Newport, ref #1403. It went up on August 26 with 84 cases, reached 97 a week later, and stood at 109 on September 10. The row shows traceback initiated and nothing else: no recall, no on-site inspection, no sampling. The advice link on that row goes to FDA’s general safe food handling page. I could find no CDC notice for it.

Two other unnamed files have had more work and still have no answer. Ref #1379, a Listeria monocytogenescluster of nine people posted July 22, shows traceback, inspection and sampling all initiated, and eight weeks later no food is named. Ref #1392, a Cyclospora file posted the same day, has grown to 231.

To be fair to the agency, FDA’s own page says plainly that investigations that do not produce specific steps for consumers may never pin down a source. Plenty of outbreaks end without a food. A blank product column is not proof that anyone is sitting on anything. But 109 people in a Newport outbreak with only traceback checked is a file the public should hear more about.

Closed, and told us nothing: romaine, ref #1382

This is the entire public row for the romaine E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, from the Closed Investigations section of the same page:

FDA column	Entry for ref #1382
Date posted	July 1, 2026
Pathogen	E. coli O157:H7
Product linked to illnesses	Romaine lettuce
Total case count	14
Investigation status	Closed
Outbreak status	Ended (link to general handling advice)
Recall initiated	Blank
Traceback initiated	✔
On-site inspection initiated	Blank
Sample collection and analysis initiated	Blank

Fourteen people were sick. FDA posted the file July 1 with no food named and named romaine only when it closed the file on September 10. The What’s New note on the table says CDC had declared the outbreak over as of July 29, that epidemiologic and traceback data pointed to romaine as the likely source, and that by the time investigators got there the lettuce was past its shelf life. The row shows traceback and nothing more: no inspection, no sampling, no recall, no advisory. The advice link is the general handling page. No grower. No processor. I wrote about the closure the day it happened.

The page makes a promise. It says that when a cause or contributing factors are identified that could help prevent the next outbreak, FDA commits to publishing a summary of the findings. On the 2026 closed list, three files have their reference numbers linked to a summary document, including the May moringa outbreak, #1377. Ref #1382 has no summary, at least not yet. Neither does the 89-person 2024 romaine outbreak, ref #1280, which shows traceback, inspection and sampling all initiated and closed with no firm named on the table.

If traceback led to one processor and one grower, FDA should say who they are. Lettuce past its shelf life is a reason there is nothing left to recall. It is not a reason there is nothing left to learn.

Marked Active after FDA said it was done

Four rows read Ended in the outbreak column and Active in the investigation column: #1384, #1383, #1378 and #1358.

For one of them the pairing makes sense. On the Nara infant formula file, #1383, CDC declared the outbreak over August 27, and FDA says its root cause investigation is still going. The same reasoning covers the iceberg lettuce file, which the table still carries as Ongoing; FDA says it is still working out how the lettuce became contaminated.

For two others, FDA’s own advisories say the opposite of the table. The January moringa advisory, #1358, opens by saying CDC declared the outbreak over and FDA’s investigation has closed. The egg advisory, #1378, updated September 3, says FDA’s outbreak investigation is complete. The table was updated a week after that, on September 10, and still lists both as Active. The last one, Cyclospora #1384, has 18 cases, an Ended outbreak, traceback only, and no advisory, so there is no way to tell from the outside where it stands.

The egg outbreak closed at 134 sick

The egg closure deserves its own paragraph, because the final numbers are well above what was reported in July. FDA’s final update counts 134 people from 18 states, 34 hospitalized and no deaths, with illnesses starting between November 21, 2025, and August 12, 2026. On July 24 the count was 98 people from 17 states with 26 hospitalized. Of the 54 people with information, 46 reported eating eggs.

The evidence got stronger, too. FDA inspected Midwest Poultry Services, L.P. in Texas and collected environmental samples. Three were positive for Salmonella and matched the outbreak strain by whole genome sequencing. The company recalled white and brown cage-free shell eggs from its Texas farms on July 22, with sell-by or best-by dates of July 20 through August 17.

Two things remain open. FDA confirmed distribution of the recalled eggs in six states, AR, LA, MS, NM, OK and TX, while sick people lived in 18. The July update also said Midwest Poultry did not account for all of the illnesses and that investigators were looking for other sources. The final update calls the Texas eggs a likely source and does not say whether any other source was found.

The table is behind its own pages

The iceberg lettuce row still says the outbreak is Ongoing. CDC ended it September 11, the day after the table was last touched. FDA has since updated the iceberg advisory and posted a post-outbreak response page. The table has not moved in six days. For the largest outbreak on it, that is the difference between a list that tells the public where things stand and one that has to be checked against three other pages.

What would fix it

None of this takes a new law. When an advisory says FDA’s investigation is complete, move the row to Closed the same day. When a file closes with a food named, post the summary the page already promises, and name the firms traceback identified. When an unnamed file passes 100 sick, tell the public at least the states and the onset dates.

Sixteen open files. Eight with no food named. Two carried as Active after FDA said it was finished. And one romaine closure with fourteen sick people and nothing else. The table is the best public tool we have for following FDA’s outbreak work. It should say what the agency knows.