About a year ago, in January 2025 and November 2024, I wrote a simple question in this space. E. coliO157:H7 Romaine Outbreak: Why is the FDA ~ no Please tell the public who grew, processed and sold lettuce that sickened 89 people in 15 states, hospitalized 36, gave 7 of them hemolytic uremic syndrome and killed one person. The agency quietly announced the outbreak was over and left the vehicle there, calling it a “joint supplier” of romaine lettuce. There are no growers. No processor. There is no name.
At the time, I said I would weigh in where the FDA did not. I have now spent several months since doing exactly that. Stay at the institution until you stop editing documents that shouldn’t have been hidden in the first place. The document is now in your hands and tells the story that the gray box was created to protect you from you.
Here’s the short version of how this went down:
When the FDA first published a summary of its traceback investigation into this outbreak (CARA #1280), nearly all names of significance were removed under a (b)(4) exemption (part of the Freedom of Information Act). This is to protect truly confidential commercial information and trade secrets. The processor was a gray box. The planter was a gray box. The ranch was a gray box. Distribution centers, brokers, lot codes – it’s all a gray box. What the public was left with was a document that identified the romaine lettuce as a vehicle but gave no indication of whose romaine it was or where it came from.
So I did what I always do. I stayed with them. And the FDA phased out the revisions to the document.
The completely unmodified version now identifies in plain text what the (b)(4) box is hiding.
- Taylor Farms of California (Salinas, CA, FEI 3012342127) was the sole processor. The summary states that Taylor Farms “supplied all available romaine lettuce at all points of sale during the period of interest.”
- Anthony Costa & Sons LLC, Soledad, CA, was a single grower.
Records populate the other end of the chain, which was also originally edited. The unredacted summary names Andre’s Banquets and Catering in St. Louis, Missouri (1 in 15 states) as the caterer at the center of the largest cluster of illnesses. Many of these incidents involved people actually eating lettuce. The trace links Andre’s to three separate catering events with dining dates from November 6-8, 2024. This includes a marching band banquet and Veterans Day luncheon at a St. Louis-area high school, with 22 cases linked to that branch of service alone. The lettuce blends Andre offers are sourced through distributors and traced right up the chain to Taylor Farms and Anthony Costa & Sons. But the public couldn’t tell any of it, the names of caterers, school events and suppliers all sat behind the same gray box. This meant that sick families at the event couldn’t see in the agency’s own records how the lettuce on their plate was connected to the field it came from.
None of this is a trade secret. The identity of the company that processed the lettuce that killed the person is not a commercial secret. The name of the farm that grew it is not a trade secret. Harvest dates are not exclusive formulas. These are the basic facts of a public health disaster, and the only thing the editing accomplished was to delay the moment when the public and the families of those hospitalized could find out who was responsible.
I’ve been making claims like this for years, and I’ll state them again here because the FDA keeps forcing them on me. Formulations, ingredients, and product manufacturing methods are trade secrets. It is unknown who supplied the contaminated raw materials, who made the contaminated products, or where the contaminated products were sold. This is especially true during an outbreak. It’s not hard to draw that line. The agency simply refuses to draw.
This is important for reasons that go far beyond my own annoyance. As long as its name appeared behind a gray box, the company was free to take the position that the evidence in the investigation and elsewhere did not point to it. I have watched that movement several times. The processor reviewed its own internal traceability and announced, “We determined that no commonalities were identified,” then let fixes do the rest. But the FDA’s own records tell a different story. The agency’s backtracking identified a single processor and a single grower and found that the related products were available at all service points and were linked to specific lots. An unedited document leaves no room for “it wasn’t us.” It was them. The records say so by name.
This is why overediting is not a harmless bureaucratic habit. If the FDA obscures the names of processors and growers during a fatal disease outbreak, it is not protecting trade secrets. This gives the responsible companies a disclaimer they did not earn and the public did not agree to. The (b)(4) exemption is intended to protect genuine competitive information, not to spare lettuce processors the embarrassment of having their name known in connection with produce sold.
There’s no need to guess whether transparency will make the sky fall, because we’ve already run the experiment. For most of the 2000s, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service designated manufacturers. E. coli– Sold contaminated meat but 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 to them because “we bought our meat at Safeway, not ConAgra.” In 2008, after years of industry thinking about distribution lists, FSIS finally concluded that naming retailers would not cause significant competitive harm and began making the lists public. Retailers of USDA-regulated products survived. Trade secrets have not been destroyed. Consumer confidence is up, not down. Chicken Little, the sky did not fall.
The FDA, which oversees about 80 percent of the food supply, may have learned that lesson from its sister agency 20 years ago. Instead, it’s still hiding behind “confidential commercial information,” and consumers are still confused by too little information rather than too much. The most serious case I know of was the 2017 outbreak linked to IM Healthy soy butter (a fancy name for a product that carries pathogens) that sickened dozens of people, some of them seriously ill children. A recall was announced, but no retailer was named, the company was bankrupt and unwilling to help, and the products remained on shelves and online for months after the recall. This is what ensures confidentiality. Contaminated products are still accessible to the next family, while the agency protects its “secrets” from no one but the seller.
A few years ago, a senior CDC official defended the withholding of company names, saying the practice not only protects public health but also “corporate profits that could be harmed by bad publicity.” I have a lot of respect for the guys in the trenches, but that description has always been exactly backwards. Governments do not exist to protect companies’ profits from the consequences of selling food that harms people. Protecting the public sometimes means that the companies responsible take a hit to their reputations. It’s not a bug in transparency. That’s exactly the point.
I will briefly explain the principles. When people are hospitalized and someone dies, public interest in knowing who grew and processed the food is highest, and commercial interest in remaining anonymous is lowest. In cases like these, the FDA’s editorial practices upset this balance. We treat our company’s name as our most guarded secret, even though it is the most important thing the public has a right to know.
We are pleased that the FDA ultimately did not edit this. I didn’t have to ask. The next family won’t have to wait for a lawyer to figure out their name, months after the outbreak is over and the lettuce is gone. If the agency truly wants to restore public trust in how it handles foodborne illnesses, it can start by drawing the line at what (b)(4) the statute actually lays out, and remembering that public reporting of outbreaks should inform the public, not protect the company.
The lettuce in this incident was grown by Anthony Costa & Sons and processed by Taylor Farms. The FDA’s own records show that it does. There was no good reason for anyone to speculate.
