{"id":220908,"date":"2026-08-17T05:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T05:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/us-law-to-investigate-foodborne-illness-outbreaks-has-been-delayed-for-15-years-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T05:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T05:10:13","slug":"us-law-to-investigate-foodborne-illness-outbreaks-has-been-delayed-for-15-years-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/us-law-to-investigate-foodborne-illness-outbreaks-has-been-delayed-for-15-years-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"US law to investigate foodborne illness outbreaks has been delayed for 15 years – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Law was set to go into effect in January, months before cyclosporiasis outbreak, but now is set for 2028
Congress passed a law to help federal agencies investigate outbreaks of foodborne illness \u2013 a regulation experts said could have stopped the US\u2019s largest cyclosporiasis outbreak much sooner.
The only problem? The rule has been delayed \u2013 for 15 years, including most recently amid lobbying in 2025.
It was set to go into effect in January 2026<\/a>, months before the single-celled parasite sickened more than 24,000 people<\/a> and killed two in the midwest.
Now, it won\u2019t go into effect until 2028.
\u201cCongress recognized this issue in 2010 and asked [the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA] to develop solutions,\u201d said Sara Sorscher, an attorney who specializes in food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group. \u201cWe are now 16 years in, and we still don\u2019t have enforcement of this rule that\u2019s meant to deal with exactly this type of situation.\u201d
Often called the \u201ctraceability rule\u201d, the regulation comes from the Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) of 2011, passed during the Obama administration. The regulation requires enhanced record-keeping for high-risk foods \u2013 namely, those which have a history of making people sick, such as soft cheese, leafy greens, eggs and peanut butter \u2013 \u201cfor persons who manufacture, process, pack, or hold foods\u201d.
The promise of the traceability rule is to allow the FDA to more quickly and accurately pinpoint where tainted food came from, all the way down to the farm. However, the rule has raised the hackles of some in the food supply chain, and retailers and food manufacturers have been particularly vocal about their concerns, lobbying reports show.
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty crazy,\u201d said Jennifer McIntire, founder of the food safety consulting firm Food Strategy, about the lengthy implementation of the rule.
Earlier this month, a group of 11 consumer, public health and labor advocates called on Congress<\/a> to speed up implementation of the rule in a letter to lawmakers \u2013 arguing this summer\u2019s cyclospora outbreak caused a \u201ccrisis in consumer confidence\u201d.
\u201cIt\u2019s probably getting close to 30,000 people \u2013 95% of all the illnesses occur in the 15 states that have Taco Bell and Taylor Farms,\u201d said Bill Marler, a leading food safety attorney, about the cyclosporiasis outbreak. He is representing more than 400 people sickened in the outbreak, and has publicly said he supports the groups\u2019 letter.
The heart of uncovering the culprit in a foodborne illness outbreak is the \u201ctraceback\u201d. Local health departments are the first line of defense \u2013 they find out who ate what and where \u2013 a restaurant, a bagged salad, a carton of eggs.
Then federal agencies, including the FDA, find out where potentially contaminated food came from by following the supply chain back from a restaurant or grocer to distributors, packing operations and farms.
\u201cFor example, let\u2019s do packaged salad \u2013 lettuce and greens,\u201d said David Lennarz, who co-founded Registrar Corp, a supply chain company that helps businesses comply with federal food safety regulations.
\u201cSome of the products you can buy are multiple types of greens \u2013 you could have radicchio, spinach, you could have lettuce. Those could be coming from completely different sources and then are all packaged up.\u201d
The current tracking system in the US derives from the Bioterrorism Act of 2003, according to Jennifer McEntire, founder of the food safety consulting firm Food Strategy. In the years following September 11, 2001, and amid the anthrax threats sent to senior US officials in its aftermath, \u201cit was recognized that food was a critical infrastructure, and that FDA had no idea \u2013 no authority \u2013 to know what food facilities even existed in the United States. And that was a loophole that was closed through the Bioterrorism Act,\u201d said McEntire.
That left the US with its current system, often called, \u201cone up, one back\u201d \u2013 meaning a restaurant or retailer needs to document where they bought something, and a distributor or manufacturer needs to know where they sold something. Still, this system left food traceback incredibly difficult.
\u201cI think FDA does a pretty darn good job, but tracebacks are very, very challenging,\u201d said Lennarz.
Determining where individual greens came from is hard because, per a group representing US farmers, data related to where the crop originated is often lost at the point where cases from farms are combined into pallets, which are then loaded on to trucks.
\u201cSince a field of leafy greens can go to multiple restaurants or multiple homes, we want to be able to find any lettuce that is offending and gather it and pull it back as quickly as possible,\u201d said De Ann Davis, vice-president of science for the Western Growers Association, which represents farmers and supports the traceability rule.
The stakes are high for farmers \u2013 the price of lettuce dropped more than 16% in July<\/a>, according to government inflation data, as consumers dropped lettuces. Davis said farmers have collected data on where cases of their produce goes for more than a decade as part of a voluntary initiative called the Produce Traceability Initiative.
\u201cIf post-when-we-ship it is not traced well, or tracked well, there is very little our grower can do about it,\u201d said Davis. The government\u2019s traceability rule would require manufacturers and sellers to retain that information, so that it can be provided to the FDA in the case of contamination.
Even as food safety advocates and growers promote traceability, some of the most intense lobbying has come from retailers and food industry groups. The Food Industry Association (FMI) described traceability as \u201cthe most complex regulation the food industry has ever faced\u201d in a recent statement, and retailers made their \u201cconcerns\u201d about the regulation known to lawmakers and regulators, lobbying reports show.
In 2024, the Reagan-Udall Foundation<\/a> for the FDA, a private nonprofit created by Congress during the Bush-era, held a roundtable with representatives of the food industry, from behemoths to influential restaurant groups. Among the attendees were Chipotle, Kellogg Company, the midwestern convenience store chain Kwik Trip, the National Restaurant Association, the National Grocers Association and McDonald\u2019s.
In a summary of the event published by Reagan-Udall, industry representatives argued traceability would \u201cpotentially require significant increases in labor, equipment, and space, with significant associated costs\u201d, according to a 2024 industry roundtable<\/a> with an FDA-affiliated nonprofit.
From 2024 to 2025, lobbyists for FMI, the southern giant Publix Super Markets, the National Retail Federation and the International Food Service Distributors Association all lobbied on the traceability rule.
The National Retail Federation (NRF), whose board of directors includes food heavyweights such as Albertson\u2019s, Walmart and Target said in lobbying disclosure reports that it was \u201crequesting inclusion of language in FY24 Agriculture Appropriations bill to require FDA to work collaboratively with industry to address concerns with FMSA 204 traceability rule\u201d, and that it was \u201cseeking support\u201d for a bill that would relax food traceability requirements, introduced by a House Republican from Florida. NRF also expressed \u201cconcerns with FMSA 204 traceability rule\u201d to the House, Senate, FDA and CDC, according to lobbying reports<\/a>.
After all this lobbying, the industry got part of what it wanted \u2013 another delay. In March 2025, the FDA announced a 30-month delay in enforcement of the traceability rule. In November 2025, Congress ended a historic 43-day<\/a> government shutdown with a budget bill.
Buried in the massive appropriations act was an important provision for food safety: Congress prohibited<\/a> enforcement of the traceability rule until July 2028 \u2013 the same provision that consumer groups asked lawmakers to rescind in a letter this month.
In a statement, FMI said: \u201cThe food industry shares FDA\u2019s commitment to strengthening food traceability, protecting public health and assisting with foodborne illness investigations to quickly identify and remove potentially contaminated products from commerce. FMI and our member companies have put in a tremendous amount of time, effort and resources over the last four years to understand and implement the FDA Food Traceability Rule.\u201d
FMI continued: \u201cIt is extraordinarily complex and requires unprecedented coordination among growers, manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers and foodservice operators. Having adequate time is essential for addressing operational realities and developing practical, workable solutions across the entire food supply chain without increasing costs or disrupting the flow of goods. We look forward to continuing to work with FDA to ensure that the rule reflects the goals of the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act and that food companies of all sizes are able to comply.\u201d
The Guardian also contacted NRF and Publix Super Markets for comment, but did not receive a response.
But for some advocates like Marler, whose law firm handles cases of victims who may be severely injured or even killed by food contamination, the delays are nothing short of inconceivable.
The traceability rule \u201callows product to get off the market faster so less people get sick \u2013 all of those things are good for industry, whose product is being besmirched by one entity\u201d, said Marler.
\u201cThese grown white men who run these organizations are acting like 2-year-olds\u2026 They just don\u2019t want to be told what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Law was set to go into effect in January, months before cyclosporiasis outbreak, but now is set for 2028Congress passed a law to help federal agencies investigate outbreaks of foodborne illness \u2013 a regulation experts said could have stopped the US\u2019s largest cyclosporiasis outbreak much sooner.The only problem? The rule has been delayed \u2013 for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":220909,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}