Marler Blog
Providing Insight on Food Poisoning Outbreaks & Litigation
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Latest posts
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No Positive Food Sample? Whole Genome Sequencing and Traceback Still Tell Us Who Got Sick and Why
Here we go again I have been doing this since the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak in 1993. In the thirty-plus years since, I have heard one defense argument more than any other: “Nobody ever found the bacteria in our food.”It sounds like a good argument. It isn’t. It…
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From California Milk to Nara Cans: The Supply Chain Behind the Second Infant Formula Botulism Outbreak
In 2026 Nara Organics sold its formula as a “European-made” product, manufactured in Germany. But the milk inside those cans started on California dairy farms. It was the same organic milk, from the same supplier, dried by the same cooperative, that FDA tied to the ByHeart…
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Weekend Wrap-Up: Twenty-Seven Children and Adults Sick After Two Pumpkin Patches and a State Fair Petting Zoo, Three of Them With Kidney Failure. The Justice Department Told FDA in Writing That Its Own Rules Keep Outbreak Names Secret and That It Can Change Them. CDC Said the Oysters Made People…
Saturday, October 31, 2026 Last Saturday’s edition was about two sets of books — the record the agencies keep and the one they publish. This week (week 17) the published record started saying what the working record already knew, some of it in writing from people who rarely put…
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CDC Drops the “May Be”: Little Wicomico River Oysters “Made People Sick.” Now 28 Ill in 13 States, an October 6 Illness Inside the Recall Window, and the Pennsylvania “Positive” Turns Out to Be a Different Salmonella
CDC updated its investigation of the Salmonella Telelkebir outbreak linked to raw oysters from Little Wicomico Oyster Company (VA-1421-SP) this morning, October 30, 2026. The count is now 28 sick in 13 states, one new case and one new state since the October 19 notice. Five…
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Brookshire Farms Pumpkin Patch E. coli Outbreak Grows to 13 Sick – Three with HUS
The County of San Luis Obispo Department of Public Health today updated its investigation into the outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) suspected to be linked to an exposure at Brookshire Farms, the pumpkin patch and corn maze on Los Osos Valley Road in San Luis…
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Credit Where It Is Due on Formula Nutrients — and a Reminder That Fifty-Two Babies Were Paralyzed by Something Else
Today HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., standing at a children’s center in Des Moines, announced the first major update to infant formula nutrient standards in nearly thirty years. The FDA issued the first of three planned proposed rules. It would update the requirements for…
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ByHeart Is “Discontinued” – But Its Founders Are Buying Perrigo’s Infant Formula Business
A hat tip to Anna Edney at Bloomberg News , who has done as much as any reporter in the country to keep infant formula safety in front of the public, for breaking the news today that the people who ran ByHeart are about to become major players in the store-brand formula…
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FDA Says the Trader Joe’s Chicken Wrap E. coli Outbreak Is Over – and That Telling You More “Would Not Have Provided Consumers with an Action.” Section 705(b) Has a Name for That: Gross Deception of the Consumer
On October 28, the FDA declared over the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to “multi-ingredient wraps with chicken” – FDA reference #1421, USDA 2026-04. Fifty people sick. Here is the agency’s explanation, in full: “The wrap identified through the investigation is past shelf life…
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Brookshire Farms E. coli Outbreak: Five Sick, Three Children in Intensive Care, and the County’s First Concrete Advice Is About the Pumpkins, Not the Animals
On Tuesday, October 27, the County of San Luis Obispo Department of Public Health confirmed five cases of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli and said it is investigating a possible link to Brookshire Farms, the pumpkin patch and corn maze at 4747 Los Osos Valley Road on the edge of…
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Tip of the Pen to the Healthy People Food Safety Workgroup: Forty Years of Scorekeeping Show Salmonella Has Not Budged Since 1997, Three of Four Pathogens Are Going the Wrong Way, and We Stopped Measuring the Trend. Here Are Ten Things That Would Move the Needle.
The Journal of Food Protection just posted an open-access article that every food safety regulator, industry executive and member of Congress should read, and then reread Table 1. “Tracking Illnesses Caused by Four Foodborne Pathogens Over Four Decades of the Healthy People…
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Pumpkin Patches, Petting Zoos and State Fairs: Three New E. coli Investigations, Twenty-Five Years of Outbreaks Just Like Them, and the Prevention Playbook Everyone Already Has
In the space of five days this October, three health departments opened investigations into Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) infections tied to animals at fall attractions: five confirmed cases, four of them hospitalized, at Bengtson’s Pumpkin Farm in Homer Glen, Illinois;…
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Two Pumpkin Farms and the State Fair of Texas: Three E. coli Investigations Tied to Animal Attractions in Five Days, in Three States. Here We Go Again.
On Tuesday afternoon, October 27, the County of San Luis Obispo Department of Public Health announced five confirmed cases of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) and an investigation into a possible link to Brookshire Farms, the pumpkin patch, corn maze and Christmas tree farm…