This check-in is shorter than the last one, and that's actually good news on a few fronts. The three outbreaks we've been tracking haven't grown since early September. But two new recalls landed this week, and one of them comes with a pattern worth knowing about if you shop for deli salads.
UpdatedThe Big Three Outbreaks — all holding steady
Genuinely good news: none of the three ongoing outbreaks we've covered have grown since our last check.
Cyclospora / iceberg lettuce: CDC's outbreak page, still last updated September 3, holds at 11,458 illnesses across 20 states, 495 hospitalizations, and 2 deaths — the same as our last report. CDC has slowed its update schedule because new cases are declining.
E. coli / frozen blueberries: No change either — 17 people sick (13 in Florida, 4 in Georgia), 6 hospitalized, per the same September 3 CDC update.
Salmonella / jalapeños: Still 431 illnesses across 32 states. A food-safety outlet flagged this week that there's been no federal update on this one since August 21 — which I can confirm checking FDA's page directly.
UpdatedChocolatey Eyeballs Candy — now officially FDA's most serious category
Quick follow-up on the Chocolatey Eyeballs recall from Part 1: FDA has since classified it Class I — its most serious risk category, meaning "a reasonable probability that consuming the product will cause serious adverse health consequences." The candy is made by Crystal Temptations under the "Little Temptations" brand name on the package, and the recall now covers 13 states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Wyoming. Same undeclared-milk issue as before — this classification just confirms how seriously FDA is treating it.
UpdatedThe Green Powder Story Keeps Growing
Part 2 covered two recalls tied to a contaminated supergreens/moringa ingredient: Food to Live's green powders (August 7) and The Hampton Grocer's Lacnola Lactation Granola (August 14), which used the same powder as an ingredient. Add a third: Foods Alive recalled its Organic Moringa Leaf Powder (8 oz pouches, "freshest by" date 110127) on September 4, sold nationwide including foodsalive.com. Same pattern as the others: no illnesses reported, and the contamination was caught by the ingredient supplier testing a retail sample — not by Foods Alive's own testing. Also the same pattern as the others: the supplier still isn't named publicly in any of these three recalls, which means if you buy loose moringa or supergreens powder from a different brand, there's currently no public way to check whether it came from the same source.
NewMade Fresh Salads & Cream Cheese — every variety the plant makes
Made Fresh Salads, Inc. recalled every ready-to-eat deli salad and cream cheese it makes on September 6 — 43 salad varieties and 27 cream cheese flavors, in 5 lb. and 30 lb. tubs and pans, sold under the Made Fresh Salads and Northside labels. Reason: potential Listeria monocytogenes, found during environmental sampling at the Bay Shore, NY facility. Distribution is limited to Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and NYC via direct delivery to stores and distributors — check anything with a printed expiration date between September 3 and 18. No illnesses reported.
Worth knowing if you're in that area: this is the third Listeria recall traced back to this same plant in under a year — a smaller recall in October 2025, another in February 2026 after Listeria was found on equipment, and now this one covering everything the plant produces. Food-safety reporting on the repeat pattern points to something food-safety folks call a "harborage site" — Listeria that's taken up residence somewhere in the building itself (a floor drain, a cracked gasket, a wet seam), rather than one bad batch. Removing a single piece of equipment, as the company did last time, doesn't necessarily fix that.
None of this means panic — it means check the label if you're in the New York metro area or you've bought moringa/supergreens powder recently. Everything else is either unchanged or trending the right direction.
↳ Next up — Part 4: The Lettuce Outbreak Is Over, Frozen Berries Grow.