55 people got sick from E. coli and Salmonella in contaminated sprouts. Four are hospitalized. And now the company that supplied the tainted seeds is simply refusing to recall them, ignoring the FDA’s request entirely. This is what happens after the Trump administration cut thousands of jobs from the exact agency responsible for catching this before it spreads.
The FDA and CDC are investigating a multistate outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli and Salmonella tied to alfalfa sprouts, an outbreak that has sickened 55 people across 15 states and hospitalized four, and that has now exposed a seed supplier simply ignoring the federal government’s recall recommendation altogether.
What’s Actually Happening
Everything Sprouts, LLC, of Minneapolis, recalled its alfalfa sprouts on August 22 after FDA and CDC traceback investigations identified them as a source of illness. Of the people investigators interviewed, 76% reported eating alfalfa sprouts before getting sick. The company expanded its recall on August 28 to include Robust Radish Sprout Mix as well, after FDA flagged potential cross-contamination.
Here’s where it gets worse. FDA’s investigation found at least one additional sprout grower who received the same contaminated lot of alfalfa seeds from a common seed supplier. FDA recommended that supplier voluntarily recall the implicated seed lot and notify its downstream customers. As of the agency’s most recent update on August 31, the supplier has done none of that: it has not issued a recall, has not notified customers, and has not instructed anyone who received the contaminated seeds to pull their products.
In plain terms: the federal government identified a specific contaminated seed lot spreading E. coli and Salmonella across multiple states, asked the responsible supplier to fix it, and that supplier has simply ignored the request while the outbreak continues.
This Isn’t Happening in a Vacuum
This sprout outbreak is landing in the middle of what public health reporters are now openly calling a crisis-level summer for American food safety. Jalapeños, frozen berries, beef, and now sprouts have all triggered major recalls this year, according to Stateline’s reporting, alongside a record-shattering cyclosporiasis outbreak tied to iceberg lettuce that has sickened more than 17,000 confirmed people since May, with nearly 12,000 more suspected cases on top of that.
That surge in outbreaks has followed one of the most aggressive rounds of federal public health staffing cuts in recent memory, cuts made under the Trump administration specifically at the agencies responsible for catching exactly this kind of contamination before it spreads.
The Numbers Behind the Cuts
According to Food Navigator’s analysis of federal employment data, the FDA lost 3,859 employees in 2025 and another 473 so far in 2026, a substantial hit to an agency that now employs just 16,602 people total. The Trump administration also cut 2,889 jobs from the CDC, the agency responsible for tracking outbreaks like this one, and 913 positions from the Food Safety Inspection Service.
Even before these cuts, the FDA was already falling short. The agency hasn’t met its congressionally mandated inspection targets since 2018, according to a Government Accountability Office report cited by the San Francisco Chronicle, and the number of food manufacturing facilities the FDA actually inspects has collapsed from 10,641 in 2011 to roughly 4,500 a decade later. The agency had only 432 investigators handling both domestic and foreign inspections in 2024, before the Trump administration cut another 3,500 FDA jobs specifically to reduce federal spending.
Michigan’s chief medical executive, Natasha Bagdasarian, put the stakes bluntly: “We are starting to see the consequences of an underfunded public health system in 2026. Currently it’s Cyclospora. Eventually, we are going to lose the ability to detect something else.”
Foreign Inspections Have Collapsed Too
It’s not just domestic oversight that’s suffered. ProPublica’s investigation, reported by SeafoodSource, found that FDA foreign food facility inspections have plummeted under the Trump administration, with monthly inspection numbers falling by nearly half. Consumer Reports Food Policy Director Brian Ronholm didn’t mince words: “Basic regulatory oversight functions have been decimated.”
The FDA has also suspended a quality control program for its own pathogen and contaminant testing labs, and scaled back its Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network to track just two pathogens: Salmonella and E. coli, the exact two pathogens behind this current sprout outbreak. The agency separately delayed its long-planned Food Traceability Rule, which would have made it easier to trace contaminated food back to its source, pushing compliance from January 2026 all the way to mid-2028.
The White House’s Response: Deny, Deny, Deny
Asked about the connection between these cuts and the summer’s wave of outbreaks, White House spokesperson Allison Schuster told Stateline flatly: “The Trump Administration has never cut FDA food inspectors or other frontline personnel for domestic disease response. President Trump’s top priority is the health and safety of the American people, and the federal government remains capable of robustly addressing any future outbreaks.”
HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard offered a similar denial to reporters, claiming “FDA investigators were not affected by staffing changes or force reductions,” and pointing to a proposed $33 million increase for food safety activities in the FY 2027 budget.
Those denials sit uneasily next to the agency’s own documented employment numbers, and next to a food safety expert with 25 years at the FDA warning that the damage isn’t easily reversible: “Even if things were to go back to normal tomorrow, the loss in future capacity will take years to undo.”
Fifty-five people are sick, four are hospitalized, and a seed supplier responsible for spreading contaminated product across state lines is simply refusing to comply with the FDA’s recall recommendation, all while the agency tasked with enforcing that recommendation is operating with thousands fewer staff than it had before the Trump administration’s cuts. The administration says none of this is connected. The agency’s own numbers, and a summer that’s already produced a record-shattering lettuce outbreak sickening tens of thousands, tell a different story.