California egg farm has not recalled products despite state's request as salmonella cases grow to 23

A San Diego County egg farm has not recalled its eggs nearly a week after state health officials matched the strain of salmonella found inside its henhouses to bacteria that has sickened 23 people, seven of them badly enough to be hospitalized, San Diego County health officials said this week.

The farm, Happy Hens in the unincorporated community of Ramona, has instead disputed that it was formally asked to pull its product at all, setting up a dispute between a small producer and government regulators over who is responsible for getting contaminated food off store shelves when a state cannot compel a recall on its own.

Case counts have climbed for six weeks

County public health officials reported on Friday that the outbreak had grown to 23 confirmed cases, up from 21 two weeks earlier and from 13 when the investigation was first disclosed on July 28. Seven people have been hospitalized, up from four in July. Illnesses have been identified in Ramona, La Mesa, Del Mar, Jamul and one case across the county line in Riverside County.

Investigators first connected the illnesses to mayonnaise made with raw, unpasteurized eggs at Ramona Family Naturals Market, a small grocery and deli. That market's owner has since stopped using raw eggs in any deli product, and county officials say cases tied specifically to the market have not grown. But as testing continued, a second and larger cluster emerged among people who say they bought eggs directly from Happy Hens or ate them elsewhere, pointing investigators toward the farm itself rather than just the deli that used its eggs.

How regulators traced the outbreak to the henhouses

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates shell-egg producers, inspected the farm beginning Aug. 17 in what the county described as a routine visit unrelated to the outbreak investigation. Inspectors swabbed the floors, perch rails and nest boxes of seven separate henhouses, the surfaces most likely to carry chicken droppings, and found salmonella in two of them. Whole-genome sequencing then matched that bacteria to the strain circulating among the sick San Diego County residents.

The California Department of Public Health shared those results with Happy Hens and, according to the county, recommended the farm voluntarily recall its eggs. Neither the state nor the FDA has the authority to force a shell-egg producer to recall product; under federal food-safety law, a recall of eggs not already implicated in an active federal enforcement action is voluntary, which is why agencies rely on producers to act once contamination is confirmed. In the absence of a recall, the county's Department of Environmental Health and Quality has instead contacted retail food facilities directly to ask them to keep any eggs traceable to the affected henhouses out of commerce.

The dispute is playing out against the backdrop of a separate, larger salmonella outbreak this summer tied to shell eggs recalled by a Texas producer, which sickened more than 130 people across 18 states before that company issued a recall. County officials have stressed the Ramona cases are a distinct, unrelated event, but the timing has drawn attention to how differently two egg producers responded to similar findings.

A farm says it was never formally asked

Happy Hens co-owner Chloe Nevarez has pushed back publicly on the county's account, saying in interviews that no state or federal official used the word "recall" when the farm was contacted.

"No one has asked us to issue a recall. We haven't used any of those eggs from those pastures out of precaution. The product on the market has only gone out on the market from unaffected sites," Nevarez told a reporter, adding, "We have a lot of questions because things don't seem to add up."

Nevarez said that during a call with county, state and FDA officials, she was asked only for her "thoughts" on a possible recall, not told to carry one out, and that eggs from the two henhouses where salmonella was detected had already been withheld from sale as a precaution before the state's findings were shared. The farm had also maintained for weeks, including in on-camera interviews, that no sample taken from its property had tested positive for salmonella, a claim consumer-safety attorneys who track outbreaks say the farm contradicted when it posted about positive results on its own social media account on Aug. 31, days before health agencies disclosed the match publicly.

People sickened in the outbreak, and their genetic links to the farm, have already prompted at least one law firm to file suit against both the market and the farm on behalf of affected families. Most people infected with salmonella develop diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps within 12 to 72 hours of exposure, with illness typically lasting four to seven days; the very young, older adults, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems face the highest risk of severe illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What happens next

Test results on eggs actually distributed from the farm, as opposed to environmental swabs taken inside the henhouses, were still pending as of the county's Friday update, and officials say those results could shape whether the state escalates its request. Absent a voluntary recall, county inspectors are relying on retailers to voluntarily set aside any remaining Happy Hens product tied to the two contaminated henhouses, an arrangement public-health officials acknowledge depends on cooperation up and down the supply chain rather than an enforceable order.

For now, shoppers who bought eggs directly from Happy Hens, or ate at businesses that used them, are being advised to watch for symptoms and to discard or return any remaining product from the affected pastures. The county has said it will continue interviewing newly reported cases to see whether the outbreak has run its course or is still growing, and whether the standoff over a formal recall will be resolved before, or only after, that count rises again.