Salmonella Traced to Texas Egg Farms Has Sickened 98 People Across 17 States, FDA Says
Indiana-based Midwest Poultry Services recalled roughly 1.6 million dozen shell eggs sold at Kroger and Brookshire stores. Twenty-six people have been hospitalized since November.
A salmonella outbreak linked to shell eggs produced on Texas farms has sickened 98 people across 17 states since late November, the Food and Drug Administration said, prompting a recall of roughly 1.6 million dozen eggs and sending 26 people to the hospital. No deaths have been reported.
The recall was issued by Midwest Poultry Services, an Indiana-based producer, and covers white shell eggs and brown cage-free eggs produced at and distributed from its Texas operations between June 6 and July 3. The affected cartons carry sell-by or best-by dates ranging from July 20 through August 17 — a window that means eggs from the recall are still sitting in refrigerators right now.
The eggs reached consumers through two retail chains. Kroger stores in Texas and Louisiana carried them, as did Brookshire Grocery stores across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Mississippi. Regulators are telling anyone who bought eggs in that period to check the dates printed on the carton and either throw them out or return them to the store for a refund.
Investigators closed the loop through genetic sequencing. Samples collected at the Texas farms tested positive for salmonella, and whole-genome analysis matched some of those isolates to the strain recovered from patients — the standard evidentiary bar for naming a source in a foodborne outbreak. The FDA cautioned, however, that Midwest Poultry does not account for every illness in the case count, which means at least one additional source is still unidentified and the investigation remains open.
The illnesses span a long tail, with onset dates running from November 21 through June 30. That eight-month spread is typical of outbreaks tied to a persistent contamination source rather than a single bad shipment, and it also means the true case count is almost certainly higher than 98. Public health agencies generally estimate that for every laboratory-confirmed salmonella case, roughly 30 go uncounted, because most people with food poisoning never see a doctor or submit a stool sample.
Salmonella infection typically produces diarrhea, fever, severe vomiting, dehydration and stomach cramps, usually appearing six hours to six days after exposure. Most otherwise healthy adults recover within a week without treatment. Young children, adults over 65 and people with weakened immune systems face a considerably higher risk of severe illness, bloodstream infection and hospitalization — the group that accounts for most of the 26 hospitalizations logged so far.
The outbreak lands while federal food safety capacity is already under strain. It is the second multistate foodborne outbreak of the summer, following a cyclospora outbreak tied to lettuce that has sickened more than 1,600 people nationwide and has itself become a case study in how long it now takes to trace contamination back to a farm.
Originally reported by PBS NewsHour.