Open FDA Outbreak Investigations: How to Read the Table

The FDA publishes a table of every foodborne outbreak its response teams are actively working on. On September 10, 2026 it held 16 investigations. Eight of them carry a case number. The other eight say “See Advisory” where the number should be, and that split is the most useful thing on the page.

This is a dated snapshot with the context the table leaves out. Everything below is as of the FDA update of September 10, 2026.

The 16 open investigations on September 10

Salmonella appears in eight rows, Cyclospora in five, E. coli in two, with single rows for Listeria and for botulism. One row carries both E. coli and Salmonella at once, which is why those add up to more than 16.

A number in the table means the FDA does not know the food

Look at which rows have digits in them. All eight are rows where the product reads “not yet identified.” All eight rows with a named food say “See advisory” instead of a count. Sixteen rows, no exceptions in either direction.

That happens because the FDA issues a public health advisory once an investigation produces something a shopper can act on, and from that moment the case count lives on the advisory page. The table stops repeating it and points there. Until then the agency names a product category at most. In its own words, it “will not publicly name a specific product until there is sufficient evidence to implicate that product.”

So the digits visible in the table add up to 569 illnesses in investigations where nobody has identified the food yet. The biggest single number on the page, 231 cases of Cyclospora under reference 1392, is attached to a blank product column. The rows with a known culprit look quieter precisely because they are further along.

Cyclospora is five of the sixteen

Five open investigations name the same parasite: references 1384, 1385, 1390, 1392 and 1398. Together the four with visible counts hold 309 cases, which is 54 percent of every illness the table shows a number for. Cyclospora runs on a season in the United States, clustering through late spring and summer, so a September snapshot catches the tail of it.

One of the five is reference 1390, the iceberg lettuce investigation behind the outbreak that put 12,883 people in 21 states on record, with 570 hospitalizations and two deaths in Michigan. We covered how the recall was built without a single positive lab sample in the breakdown of the Michigan outbreak. The other four Cyclospora rows have no food attached at all, and given how the season works, some of them may never get one.

An active investigation does not mean people are still getting sick

The table carries two status columns, and readers collapse them into one. Investigation status says whether the FDA response team is still working the file. Outbreak status says whether people are still falling ill. The agency spells out that they come apart: “At times an FDA investigation may be active after an outbreak has ended.”

On September 10 that applied to four of the 16: the Cyclospora cluster 1384, the infant formula botulism case 1383, the egg Salmonella outbreak 1378 and the moringa file 1358. Nobody new is getting sick from any of them. Traceback, inspections and sampling continue anyway, because the point of that work is the next outbreak rather than this one.

A fifth row is about to join them. The CDC declared the iceberg lettuce outbreak over on September 11, one day after this snapshot was taken, and the FDA advisory now reads that “although the outbreak is over, FDA’s outbreak investigation remains ongoing.” The row will flip to Ended in the next weekly refresh while the investigation stays open.

The oldest file on the table is 1358, posted January 14 and still open eight months later. Its outbreak ended long ago.

Moringa leaf powder generated four investigations in eight months

That oldest file is worth a second look. Moringa leaf powder is a niche supplement, and between October 2025 and May 2026 it produced four separate FDA outbreak investigations: reference 1345 in October, 1358 in January, 1365 in February and 1377 in May. Three are closed and one is still open.

The serotypes differ across them, including Richmond, Newport, Kentucky and Typhimurium, which argues against one bad batch repeatedly resurfacing. Dried leaf powder is harvested, dried and milled without a kill step, so whatever reaches the leaf in the field tends to reach the jar. A product that small appearing four times in eight months is the kind of pattern the table is good at exposing and bad at explaining.

Sprouts are on the table twice at once

Reference 1394, opened August 19, covers alfalfa sprouts carrying several E. coli strains and Salmonella Agona at the same time. Reference 1411, added in this very update on September 10, covers broccoli sprouts from Evergreen Fresh Sprouts and Salmonella Bovismorbificans. Two separate sprout investigations running in parallel is unusual even for a commodity with this record.

We have written up both. The alfalfa side is in the alfalfa sprout outbreak, the mechanism that lets one contaminated lot reach growers in a dozen states is in how one seed lot becomes a multistate outbreak, and the part where a supplier declines to pull its seed is in what happens when a company refuses an FDA recall request.

Sprouts also show up repeatedly in the closed tables: two investigations in October 2024, sprouted beans in July 2025, sprouts again in August 2025. Warm water, several days, and a seed whose contamination happened in a field a year earlier.

What changed in the September 10 update

• Reference 1411 was added: Salmonella Bovismorbificans in broccoli sprouts from Evergreen Fresh Sprouts, with traceback started and an advisory issued.
• The Salmonella Newport count under 1403 rose from 97 to 109.
• The Cyclospora count under 1392 was adjusted from 225 to 231.
• More Great Value frozen berries were recalled under 1389, the E. coli O145:H28 investigation, with the advisory updated September 3.
• Investigation 1382 closed. The CDC had declared that romaine lettuce outbreak over on July 29, and by the time romaine was identified the product was past shelf life.
• The egg outbreak under 1378 ended, with sampling results published September 3.

How to read the table without misreading it

Four things are worth knowing before you draw conclusions from a row.

1. Date posted is not when illnesses began. It is the day the FDA response team started coordinating the investigation. Onsets usually run weeks earlier, and for Cyclospora the reporting lag alone can be two to three weeks.
2. Counts move weekly and in both directions. The FDA gets them from the CDC and calls them an estimate of size. Reference 1392 was adjusted from 225 to 231 in this update, and adjustments downward happen too when cases are reassigned.
3. “Not yet identified” is the normal early state. It means the genetic fingerprints match across patients but the shared food has not been pinned down. Many of these rows close without ever naming one.
4. No advisory means no consumer action exists yet. The FDA issues one when there is a specific step worth taking. A row without an advisory is not a warning you are missing, it is an investigation that has not produced a warning.

If you check this table yourself, the useful column is Product, not Cases. A named product means the traceback landed and there is something specific to avoid. A big number beside a blank one means nobody has solved it. That is the row worth watching.

Bottom line

• 16 investigations were open on September 10, 2026, and 569 illnesses sit in rows where the food is still unknown.
• Cyclospora accounts for five of the 16 and more than half of the visible cases.
• Four investigations stayed open after their outbreaks ended, and the iceberg lettuce row became the fifth a day after this snapshot.
• Sprouts hold two rows at once, and moringa leaf powder has produced four investigations in eight months.

The FDA revises this table weekly. The numbers above are the state on September 10, 2026, so check the FDA page itself before acting on any single row.

For what these investigations mean in a kitchen rather than in a table, see our food safety guide for microgreens, sprouts and leafy greens.

Sources

• FDA, Investigations of Foodborne Illness Outbreaks, table updated September 10, 2026.
• FDA, Investigation of Multistate Outbreak of Cyclospora Illnesses: Iceberg Lettuce, updated September 11, 2026.
• CDC outbreak declaration for the iceberg lettuce cyclosporiasis outbreak, September 11, 2026.