https://www.marlerblog.com/files/2026/10/Listeria-Peaches-2025.pdf

If you want to know what is really going on in food safety, read eFoodAlert. Phyllis Entis, the FoodBugLady, did it again today – this time pulling an FDA CORE investigation report through FOIA and then doing the detective work the government should have done for the public in the first place.

Here is what she found. In 2025, eight people were sickened by Listeria monocytogenes in an undisclosed number of states. The suspected vehicle: California peaches. Only two of the ill could be traced back, but both tracebacks led to the same distributor and packer. FDA inspected that packer, issued a Form 4056 on October 9, 2025 citing equipment and sanitation recordkeeping problems, and found Listeria in water, environmental, and produce samples – though none matched the outbreak strain.

The company’s own root cause work then turned up presumptive positives on a set of brushes. That led to the October 29, 2025 Moonlight Packing recall of yellow and white peaches shipped to more than 30 states, Canada and Mexico, followed by peach salsa recalls from Supreme Produce and JFE Franchising sold at Kroger stores. Phyllis’s working theory – that the brushes replaced in September may have carried the outbreak strain – is the simplest explanation. As she puts it, “we’ll never know.”

This is not new. In 2023, CDC linked 11 Listeria illnesses in 7 states – ten hospitalized, one death – to HMC Farms peaches, plums and nectarines. To its credit, HMC Farms published a 109-page list of every retail store that received the recalled fruit. That is what real transparency looks like.

Which brings me to the best part of Phyllis’s piece. FDA redacted the food, the states, the packer, and the retail chain from the report – information that was, for the most part, already public if you knew where to look. Phyllis knew where to look. She followed the unredacted crumbs (the recall date, the 2016 prior inspection) straight to Moonlight Packing.

Her bottom line is mine too: excessive redactions waste time and protect no one. That is exactly why I have asked FDA, through citizen petitions, to name the firms tied to outbreaks and to publish recall consignee lists. Consumers should not need a microbiologist with a FOIA habit to learn what made people sick – but thank goodness we have one.

Thanks, Phyllis. Read the whole post here.