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FDA Finally Names the Food in Salmonella Outbreak #1402: Romaine. It Still Won’t Say Whose, Where, or Why It Took Twelve Weeks

by | Nov 6, 2026 | Law | 0 comments

I know, I sound like a broken record (you have to be old to understand that).

On August 12, 2026, FDA added a new line to its CORE outbreak investigation table: reference #1402, Salmonella I 4,[5],12:i:-. Forty-three people sick. Product linked to illnesses: “Not Yet Identified.”

Yesterday, November 4, twelve weeks later, FDA moved #1402 to the Closed Investigations table and filled in that blank. The food was romaine lettuce.

Here is the whole of what FDA chose to tell the public:

CDC, FDA, and state and local partners conducted epidemiologic and traceback investigations and identified romaine lettuce as the likely source of illnesses in this outbreak. FDA collected and analyzed environmental samples as part of the investigation, but all samples were reported as negative for Salmonella. Additionally, once investigators had enough information to confirm romaine lettuce as the source of this outbreak, the products were past their shelf life and no longer available for sale. This outbreak has ended, and there is no risk to consumers.

That’s it. No grower. No brand. No processor. No growing region. No states. No hospitalizations. No ages. No onset dates. No explanation of when investigators actually knew it was romaine. As Food Safety News put it, FDA closed the file with a roughly hundred-word notice that names nobody.

I have been doing this for more than thirty years. I am tired of this movie.

What the table showed, and when

Look at the checkmarks on #1402. Traceback initiated. On-site inspection initiated. Sample collection and analysis initiated. All three boxes were checked while the “product” column still read “Not Yet Identified.”

You do not send investigators on-site, or start a traceback, without knowing what food you are chasing. FDA had a working theory, almost certainly romaine, for weeks before it told anyone. When I wrote about the table in September, #1402 was already listed as ongoing with an inspection done and no food named. When I looked again in October, it was one of nine outbreaks that were over but still open, 43 sick, no food identified.

So, the public got the word “romaine” only when it could no longer do anything with it.

“No risk to consumers” is not the point

FDA’s closing line is always the same: the product is past its shelf life, so there is no risk to consumers. That is true as far as it goes. Nobody is going to buy that particular head of lettuce in November.

But that sentence treats the public as nothing more than a shopping cart. People who got sick are not shopping carts. They are 43 confirmed patients, and if you apply CDC’s multiplier for unreported Salmonella illness (roughly 29 sick for every case confirmed, a figure Food Safety News noted again yesterday), the real number could be well over a thousand.

Those people have a right to know what made them sick and who produced it. So do their doctors. So do the restaurants, schools, and hospitals that bought that romaine and served it. So does every other grower in the region.

And the companies involved already know. Traceback means FDA walked the invoices back from the point of sale to the field. The distributor, the processor, and the grower all know. The only people kept in the dark are the ones who got sick, the public that pays for the investigation, and the people who unknowingly buy the same producers product again without knowing its history.

Negative samples do not mean nothing happened

FDA says all environmental samples were negative for Salmonella. That is a common result, and it is not exculpatory. By the time investigators show up at a field weeks after harvest, the crop is gone, the irrigation water has changed, the weather has changed, and whatever contaminated that lettuce may be long gone too.

The epidemiology and the traceback identified romaine. That is how most produce outbreaks are solved. A negative sample at the farm weeks later should not become the reason a company’s name stays secret.

This is not a one-off

#1402 is the second romaine outbreak this year that FDA named only after the fact and without naming a grower. FDA posted an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, #1382, on July 1. CDC declared it over on July 29. FDA did not report romaine as the vehicle until September, and neither FDA nor CDC has ever named the grower. Fourteen people were confirmed sick.

Yesterday’s update did the same thing with parsley. Cyclospora outbreak #1392 was posted July 22. FDA now says ill people reported eating parsley, the traceback investigation was done, all product samples were negative, and by the time investigators confirmed parsley “as the likely source,” it was expired. FDA also cut the case count from 241 to 175 and moved 66 cases into a new outbreak, #1396, because of “differences identified during the traceback investigation.” For #1396, FDA says it could not confirm a vehicle at all. No grower, no country of origin, no importer for either.

Meanwhile, the closed table now carries a long list of 2026 outbreaks where no food was ever identified: #1396 (Cyclospora, 66 sick), #1403 (Salmonella Newport, 119 sick), #1387 (Salmonella Oranienburg, 99 sick), #1385 (Cyclospora, 38 sick), and #1384 (Cyclospora, 18 sick). That is 340 confirmed illnesses with no food, no firm, and no answer.

A word about this Salmonella

Salmonella I 4,[5],12:i:- is what microbiologists call a monophasic variant of Salmonella Typhimurium. It is one of the more common serotypes reported in the United States, and strains of it are frequently resistant to multiple antibiotics. It is more often tied to meat and poultry. How did an animal-associated Salmonella get onto leafy greens? Nearby animal operations? Irrigation water? Dust? Soil amendments? A public root cause analysis would tell us. FDA has published those for romaine before.

I like the people at FDA. For why, then?

I have said this before, and I will say it again. I like the people at FDA. I have known many of them for decades. The epidemiologists, investigators, and lab staff who worked #1402 did their jobs. They found the food. That is hard, unglamorous work, and it rarely gets thanked.

But this decision, to sit on “romaine” for twelve weeks and then close the file without a grower, a processor, or a state, looks like FDA is hiding information from the public. Why?

It is not to protect consumers. FDA says there is no risk. It is not to protect the investigation. It is closed. It is not because the law ties FDA’s hands. FDA has named farms, processors, and brands after the product was gone at least eight times since 2006, and the Justice Department just told HHS that FDA can write a rule to do it every time. The only ones who benefit from the silence are the company whose lettuce made 43 people sick and the buyers who would rather not know.

This is the same agency that told the food industry last year that “radical transparency in food safety and nutrition actions is key to reducing foodborne illness.” I agree. Naming the source of an outbreak is not radical. It is the minimum.

When a government agency knows something about a public health event and will not say it, people fill the gap with the worst assumption, that someone is being protected. Maybe that is unfair to the people I know at FDA. But FDA is the only one that can fix it, and it can fix it by saying the name. Transparency is not an attack on FDA. It is how FDA earns the trust it needs the next time it asks the public to throw something away.

What FDA should release now

The investigation is closed. Whatever reason FDA had for silence while it was open, an ongoing investigation, protecting the traceback, is gone. FDA should post:

  • The grower, processor, and brand of the implicated romaine, and the growing region.
  • The number of states, the onset dates, and the number of people hospitalized.
  • When the traceback converged on romaine, and when FDA first suspected it.
  • Where the on-site inspections happened, what was sampled (water, soil, equipment, finished product), and what was found beyond Salmonella.
  • Whether any recall or market withdrawal was considered, and why not.
  • Whether CDC ever posted a public notice. I could not find one.

If FDA does not volunteer that information, it will come out the slow way, through FOIA and through litigation. It should not take a lawyer to find out what made 43 people sick. It should take a rule.

#1402 is Exhibit A for my petition

I am about to file two citizen petitions with FDA: one on Outbreak Firm Disclosure and a companion on recall consignee lists. I have added #1402 to both. The first one opens with a romaine outbreak: #1382, the fourteen-person E. coli file FDA closed in September with no grower, no processor, no brand, and no state. #1402 now sits right beside it, and every request in the petition fits it.

  • Name the food once traceback begins. Item 5 of the petition asks that when FDA starts traceback on a specific food, the table say what that food is, and that it carry the counts FDA and CDC already have: cases, states, onset dates, hospitalizations, and deaths. #1402 had traceback, inspection, and sampling checked for weeks while the product column said, “Not Yet Identified,” and it closed without a single state or hospitalization.
  • Reach the whole supply chain. Item 3 asks that the rule cover the grower, harvester, cooler, processor, distributor, and food service establishment, not just a consumer-facing brand. As the petition says, lettuce can move from a field to a plate without a logo on it at any point. A rule written around brand names would leave #1402 unnamed forever.
  • Treat “romaine” alone as a problem, not an answer. The petition asks FDA to recognize that when the public record names only a commodity, consumers attribute the outbreak to every grower of that commodity, including those that did nothing wrong. Telling people “romaine” in November, and nothing more, punishes every honest romaine grower in the country and shields the one whose lettuce made people sick.
  • Name firms after the investigation closes. “Past shelf life” is FDA’s stock reason for silence. The petition asks for a rule that the identity of a firm implicated by epidemiology and traceback is not confidential commercial information, whether or not the product is still on shelves. That is the same evidence FDA used to close #1402.

And FDA cannot say its hands are tied. On October 26, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel told HHS that section 705(b) of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act lets FDA amend its own regulations to authorize naming firms in a supply chain. The obstacle is FDA’s regulations, and FDA can change them. That is all the petitions ask.

The chicken wraps in E. coli outbreak #1421 show the same problem with a brand attached. Yesterday FDA wrote that it, USDA-FSIS, and CDC have “confirmed” the multi-ingredient wrap with chicken as the likely source. The table still does not say Trader Joe’s, even though FSIS confirmed it to USA TODAY in October. Fifty people are sick, and my firm represents four of them. I laid out the broader fix in Food Safety News.

Elsewhere on yesterday’s table

  • Salmonella Javiana #1424 grew from 59 to 65 sick, and FDA has now started traceback. Again, no food named.
  • Listeria #1417 rose from 50 to 51, with traceback, inspection, and sampling all underway and no food named. Listeria #1379 went from 11 to 12 even though FDA lists that outbreak as ended.
  • Salmonella Bovismorbificans #1411 is over. That one, tied to Evergreen Fresh Sprouts broccoli sprouts and recalled broccoli seed, sickened 34 people in six states. FDA named the sprouter and the brands, which shows it can be done.

Bottom line

Twelve weeks. Forty-three confirmed illnesses, likely many more. Traceback, inspections, and sampling. And at the end, one word: romaine.

The public paid for this investigation. The people who got sick lived it. They deserve the rest of the sentence.

Sources

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