Inside the FDA's Race to Contain Our Foodborne Outbreaks

In a nondescript federal building, and in health departments across the country, multiple investigations are always underway. Its subject is not a criminal syndicate, but something that strikes a more intimate and universal fear: contaminated food in our kitchens. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) CORE Response Teams are the detectives in these cases, managing a rotating roster of outbreaks linked to pathogens like Salmonella , Listeria , and E. coli . A single page on the FDA’s website, updated weekly, serves as the public ledger for this ongoing work, listing outbreaks in various stages of resolution. As of mid-October 2025, this list reveals a continuous cycle of microbial threats, from a newly announced Salmonella Africana outbreak with its source still under traceback, to