An attorney who drafted two citizen petitions asking the Food and Drug Administration to disclose more information during foodborne illness outbreaks has spent recent weeks revising those drafts based on feedback from growers, processors, lawyers and public health officials. The petitions were prompted in part by an E. coli outbreak linked to Trader Joe's chicken salad wraps that remained largely unnamed on federal agency websites for weeks.
What Happened With the Trader Joe's Wraps
On September 23, the FDA listed an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak on its public investigations table, citing 25 illnesses and describing the source only as a "multi-ingredient wrap with chicken (suspect)." No brand, retailer, manufacturer or affected states were named. Trader Joe's had already pulled its Tarragon Chicken Salad Wraps from stores in nine states after the FDA flagged a possible issue. The company's name did not appear publicly until October 15, when a lawsuit filing identified it, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service confirmed the link to USA TODAY on October 23. By Friday evening, neither agency's website had named the brand, states, hospitalization numbers or cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome, and no formal recall or store list had been issued.
Two Petitions Aimed at Closing the Gap
The first petition would direct the FDA to establish by rule that a firm's identity in an outbreak investigation is not automatically confidential commercial information, requiring companies to prove a genuine trade-secret basis for withholding their name. It would apply across the supply chain, including growers, coolers, processors, distributors and retailers, and would require naming a suspect ingredient once traceback begins, along with case counts, states and health outcomes already collected by investigators.
The second petition asks the FDA to make public retail consignee lists for every Class I recall, mirroring a practice the USDA has followed for meat and poultry since 2008. It would also require recalls to be classified within ten days and would treat a "proactive removal" of a suspect food the same as a formal recall, regardless of how a company labels the action.
What Comes Next
The petitions' author plans to file both with the FDA after October 30 and is inviting a final round of input before then, including from businesses on how quickly they could produce consignee lists and from public health officials on whether earlier disclosure helps or complicates outbreak investigations. Once filed, the petitions would be entered into the FDA's public docket, though the agency retains discretion over whether and how to act on them, and any resulting rule would likely require further rulemaking procedures before taking effect.