A little over a year ago, in January 2025, I wrote in this space asking a simple question about the November 2024 E. coliO157:H7 romaine outbreak: why would the FDA not tell the public who grew, processed, and sold the lettuce that sickened 89 people across 15 states, hospitalized 36, gave 7 of them hemolytic uremic syndrome, and killed one? The agency had quietly announced the outbreak was over, called the vehicle a “common supplier” of romaine lettuce, and left it there. No grower. No processor. No names.
I said then that I would weigh in where the FDA would not. I have now spent the months since doing exactly that — staying on the agency until it unredacted the documents it should never have hidden in the first place. The documents are now in hand, and they tell the story the gray boxes were built to keep from you.
Here is the short version of how this played out.
When the FDA first released its traceback investigation summary for this outbreak (CARA #1280), nearly every name that mattered was blacked out under the (b)(4) exemption — the part of the Freedom of Information Act meant to shield genuine confidential commercial information and trade secrets. The processor was a gray box. The grower was a gray box. The ranch was a gray box. The distribution centers, the brokers, the lot codes — all gray boxes. What the public was left with was a document that confirmed romaine lettuce as the vehicle but told you absolutely nothing about whose romaine it was or where it came from.
So, I did what I always do. I stayed on them. And the FDA, in stages, unredacted the document.
The fully unredacted version now identifies, in plain text, what the (b)(4) boxes were hiding:
- Taylor Farms of California (Salinas, CA; FEI 3012342127) was the sole processor. The summary states that Taylor Farms “supplied all the romaine lettuce that would have been available at all points of sale during the timeframe of interest.”
- Anthony Costa & Sons LLC (Soledad, CA) was the single grower.
The records also fill in the other end of the chain, and that, too, was originally redacted. The unredacted summaries name Andre’s Banquets and Catering of St. Louis, Missouri (1 of the 15 states) as the caterer at the center of the largest cluster of illnesses — the events where many of these people actually ate the lettuce. The traceback ties Andre’s to three separate catered events with meal dates of November 6 through 8, 2024, including a marching band banquet and a Veteran’s Day luncheon at a St. Louis-area high school, with twenty-two cases linked to that point of service alone. The lettuce blend Andre’s served was supplied through its distributor and traced s