The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published an extensively redacted Executive Incident Summary (EIS) for a fatal listeriosis outbreak involving an imported produce item that occurred in 2024–2025.

Outbreak Summary: What is and is not Disclosed

According to the EIS, 27 people fell ill between April 2024 and June 2025, resulting in 25 hospitalizations and one death. Positive laboratory findings and whole genome sequencing (WGS) analysis identified an unspecified produce commodity as the suspected vehicle of illness in the outbreak. The unnamed implicated firm collected samples from its suppliers’ distribution centers in an unspecified region and identified a supplier of the outbreak vehicle based on a reported restaurant exposure.

FDA did not conduct an official traceback investigation, but a limited distribution analysis was conducted for firms that reported purchasing. Agency investigators carried out inspections and collected records at several redacted businesses; FDA did not issue any noncompliance reports as a result of these investigative actions.

The agency collected an import sample that tested negative for Listeria and Salmonella, but a sample collected by the unnamed firm that tested positive for the outbreak strain pointed to a certain supplier and distribution center. Based on these findings, a redacted company recalled specific lots of an unnamed product manufactured by an unnamed firm.

Ultimately, FDA added the redacted implicated product and other commodities from the implicated firm(s) in an unspecified region to Import Alert 99-23, “Detention Without Physical Examination of Produce Due to Contamination With Human Pathogens.”

In summary, redacted key details about the outbreak include:

• Demographics about the outbreak patients, including the states in which they resided
• The suspected vehicle of illness
• The region from which the implicated product was imported
• The names of any of the firms involved in the outbreak, including the retailer(s), distributor(s), supplier(s), or manufacturer(s).

FDA’s Practice of Protecting Company Information

FDA began posting EISs in September 2025 as a show of “radical transparency,” but heavily redacts them “in accordance with federal disclosure laws and FDA regulations to protect confidential and personally identifiable information.”

In February 2026, Stop Foodborne Illness submitted a petition to FDA urging the agency to adopt a policy of publicly disclosing the names of all companies associated with foodborne illness outbreaks, regardless of whether there is a related recall, arguing that the legal basis on which FDA protects company information is inconsistent.