— opinion —
A father named Chris George spent the better part of a year trying to answer a question that wasn’t that hard to answer. Who grew and processed the lettuce that almost killed my son?
Colton George, now 10, was 9 years old when he ate romaine contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 in the fall of 2024. He spent 18 days in the hospital. He developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (a complication that I have watched destroy kidneys in children for over 30 years) and was discharged after nine days of continuous dialysis, five days of intermittent dialysis, and five blood transfusions. He recovered from the acute phase. He will be under the care of a nephrologist for the rest of his life.
While Colton was in his hospital bed, the FDA already knew the names of the companies that grew and processed the lettuce. The file has a name. December 4, 2024 We published the number of cases and their estimated sources in the outbreak table. And one thing that was important to Colton’s family: his name was cleared. That’s because there was no active recall and the agency determined the company’s name was “confidential commercial information.”
I have made the same claim for years and will make it again. Because the FDA keeps forcing me that the company name is not a trade secret and is not confidential commercial information. Stop Foodborne Illness has now brought these claims before the agency in a formal citizen petition, and it is correct. The FDA must approve this.
Let me make it clear from the beginning what I am asking for and what I am not asking for. I am not asking the FDA to name a company based on hunches, rumors, or a single unconfirmed complaint, nor am I asking them to release the name if there is evidence that disproves that company or product as the cause of the outbreak. Request disclosure if the agency’s own investigation (epidemiological, traceback, laboratory evidence) points to a specific company or product as the source. Once there is evidence, the name becomes public. Otherwise, no one is asking the agency to guess.
It’s not difficult to draw a line
The agency hides behind trade secret laws and FOIA exemption 4, treating the names of food companies linked to outbreaks as if they were proprietary formulas. That’s not true. Read the statute. Section 1905 protects the trade secrets, processes, operations, work styles, and financial substance (income, profits, losses, and revenue streams) of a business. It doesn’t say anything about the company’s name because that’s not what it’s called.
Courts have already drawn a line that the FDA refuses to draw. in CREW v. Department of JusticeThe D.C. Circuit Court ruled that a company name itself is not “commercial or financial” information, and that the mere possibility of reputational or economic harm as a result of the company name is not sufficient. And according to the Supreme Court ruling Argus LeaderAccording to the decision, information is considered “confidential” only if it is customarily kept private and shared with some degree of confidentiality. Same here. Companies that grow, process, and sell food to the public are publicly owned. Your name is written on the package. We advertise under that name. Build a brand around that name. You can’t sell a product to millions of people under your own name on Monday and call that same name a confidential secret when it turns out on Tuesday that the product is contaminated.
This is a distinction I have drawn throughout my career, and it has never been complicated. The formulations, ingredients, and product manufacturing methods are trade secrets and deserve protection. This is not the case for those who supplied contaminated raw materials, those who made contaminated products, or where they were sold, especially during an outbreak. The agency simply refuses to draw that line, and disguises public health records as proprietary business information to avoid drawing that line.
We’ve already run an experiment.
There is no need to guess whether a naming company will make the sky fall. We ran an experiment 20 years ago. For most of the 2000s, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service designated manufacturers. E. coli– There was contaminated meat, but they refused to say where it was sold. I still remember people who got sick during the 2002 ConAgra outbreak telling investigators they heard about the recall but thought it didn’t apply because they bought their burgers at Safeway, not ConAgra. FSIS eventually began naming retailers. Chicken Little is wrong. The sky did not fall. What has changed is that people can finally find out whether hazardous products are in their refrigerators.
This is what the FDA continues to miss. Not disclosing your name protects no one but the company. The agency’s current policies more often and implicitly neglect fresh produce consumers than processed food consumers. Because produce gets damaged and recalls occur less frequently, the trigger to release them is never pulled. We tell Americans to eat more fruits and vegetables. This administration has built its entire health plan around “whole, healthy” foods and radical transparency. And when leafy greens make people sick and kill them, the agency refuses to tell those same Americans which brand did it. That’s not transparency. It’s the opposite.
Name supported by evidence — not previously applicable
I said at the top that I’m not asking the agency to guess, and it’s worth pausing to think about why. Because the industry is trying to muddy the waters. The standards I am describing are not loose standards. This does not mean publishing a list of every farm, processor or brand that has been somewhere in the supply chain, nor does it mean naming a company based on a single complaint or initial hunch. This means disclosure after the agency’s investigation has completed its work, that is, when epidemiological, traceback and laboratory evidence points to a specific company or product as the source.
What I’m asking for is the opposite of speculation. This is a standard that the FDA already applies every day. This is the same evidence the agency relies on to post outbreaks, issue warnings and support recalls. If the evidence is strong enough for the FDA to do something about it, it’s strong enough to share it with the families it contains. There is never any objection that the FDA could name the wrong company. The flip side is that you have to give it the right name.
Stop Foodborne Illness is demanding just that.
What the FDA Should Do
The petition lays out a clear path forward, one the agency could take up tomorrow rather than waiting years for rulemaking.
First, stop calling out your company name for confidential commercial information. The simplest fixes are also the most honest fixes. The FDA could issue a statement or memorandum saying it no longer reads trade secret law to address the names of companies involved in the outbreak. The statute does not require the agency’s current interpretation, and case law contradicts it.
Second, if an institution insists on maintaining the CCI label, it may disclose the name in accordance with its own public health authorities. The FDCA directs the FDA to ensure that food is safe, healthy, and appropriately labeled. It is a disclosure “provided by law.” The agency has already done exactly this. At the time of the 2022 “Power Greens” outbreak, they named the brands involved, even though there were no recalls and the products were past their expiration date. You can do that every time. That’s how it should be.
The third and least preferred agency could rewrite 21 CFR §20.91. Allow disclosure whenever a brand name is known, as well as when a recall is in progress. This works, but it takes years, and your family doesn’t have years.
There is no public health argument for confidentiality here, only a publicity argument. It’s not even the company’s claim, but the institution’s claim as well. Naming a company involved in an outbreak will encourage people who got sick but couldn’t connect the dots to seek treatment and report it. People who still have the product at home are told to throw it away. And this actually does one thing: make food safer over time. In other words, it gives you a compelling reason not to rebrand your company.
Chris George didn’t need to hire me to spend a year chasing a name the government already had. The next parent doesn’t have to either. Please approve the petition.
The full text of the petition is as follows:
https://www.marlerblog.com/files/2026/06/STOP-CCI-Petition-Final-2.4.2026.pdf
