Salmonella outbreak tied to broccoli sprouts widens into seed-industry recall

A salmonella outbreak that federal investigators first traced to a single Idaho sprout grower last month has widened into a seed-industry recall spanning three companies, after regulators determined that the contamination originated not at the sprouting facility but further up the supply chain, in a seed lot sold to home gardeners and commercial growers alike.

The Food and Drug Administration said in an advisory updated this week that 32 people across six states have been confirmed infected with the outbreak strain, Salmonella Bovismorbificans, with three hospitalizations and no deaths reported. The case count has held steady since late September, but the finding that contaminated seed, not a single grower's water or equipment, is the likely root cause has set off a chain of recalls among seed sellers with no direct connection to the original patients.

The scale of the outbreak

Illness onset dates in the outbreak range from July 7 through September 3, according to the FDA. Of 27 patients interviewed as of late September, 26 reported eating sprouts or microgreens before falling ill, and 22 specifically recalled eating broccoli sprouts. The affected states are Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Utah and Washington, with Washington accounting for the largest share of cases.

Public health officials caution that the confirmed count almost certainly undersells the true scope of the outbreak, since most salmonella infections are never cultured or reported to a health department.

"The true number of sick people in this outbreak is likely much higher than the number reported," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its outbreak update, noting that for every confirmed Salmonella case, the agency estimates roughly 29 more go undiagnosed.

From a sprout farm to a seed lot

The investigation began in early September, when Washington state health officials matched the outbreak strain to packaged broccoli sprouts collected from a grocery store and from a patient's refrigerator. Traceback work pointed to Evergreen Fresh Sprouts LLC, a grower in Moyie Springs, Idaho, which recalled 215 cases of its broccoli sprouts on September 4 after a third-party lab found salmonella in product marked with a September 16 use-by date. The company halted production that day and opened its own root-cause review.

What changed the shape of the investigation was a second round of testing. The FDA collected a sample from the seed lot that supplied Evergreen's sprouting operation, rather than from the finished sprouts, and found salmonella there too. Whole genome sequencing matched the bacteria in the seed to the same strain sickening people in six states, indicating the contamination most likely occurred before the seeds ever reached a sprouting tray. The agency has said the upstream seed supplier has itself recalled the implicated lot, numbered W4105, and notified its direct customers, but the FDA has not publicly named that supplier, saying only that it continues to work with the supply chain to identify every company that received seed from the same source.

Who bought the recalled seeds

Three customers of that unnamed supplier have since issued their own recalls, each covering broccoli seed intended for home sprouting or microgreen production rather than for planting in a garden bed. EAK Distribution LLC of Casper, Wyoming, pulled its Home Grown-brand green sprouting Calabrese seeds on October 2; the eight-ounce pouches had been sold on Amazon nationwide between August 20 and September 18. Eden Brothers LLC of Arden, North Carolina, followed on October 7 with a recall of its Calabrese broccoli seeds in packet, one-ounce and one-pound sizes, sold through its own website and Amazon between July 8 and September 28. Gardeners Basics of Spanish Fork, Utah, recalled its Waltham 29 Broccoli Sprouting Seeds a day later, a one-pound product sold not just through Amazon and the company's own site but also on Walmart's marketplace, eBay, Etsy and TikTok Shop.

Because all three products were sold largely online and shipped nationwide, buyers cannot rely on a local recall notice or a visit to a particular store to learn whether they have an affected package; the seeds reached home gardeners and small-scale sprout growers in states well beyond the six where illnesses have so far been confirmed. The FDA and CDC are telling anyone with seed from the recalled lots not to plant, sprout or eat them, including as microgreens, and to discard any sprouts already grown from them rather than composting the material, since the bacteria can persist in soil.

What happens next

The FDA has said its advisory "will be updated if additional downstream recalls are initiated," signaling that more companies could be added to the list as the agency continues tracing shipments from the still-unnamed seed supplier. Food Safety News reported this week that the pattern now mirrors a separate, concurrent outbreak of E. coli and salmonella linked to alfalfa sprouts, in which the FDA has likewise identified but not disclosed the responsible seed supplier. Food-safety advocates have pointed to the two parallel investigations as evidence that contamination risk in the sprouting industry increasingly sits at the seed level, where a single contaminated lot can be split among dozens of distributors before any illness is reported.

No deaths have been linked to the outbreak, and the hospitalization rate, three of 32 confirmed patients, is in line with past sprout-related salmonella events. But raw sprouts have long been treated by federal regulators as an elevated-risk food because they are eaten uncooked and grown in warm, moist conditions that favor bacterial growth; the CDC and FDA recommend that young children, older adults, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems avoid raw sprouts entirely, outbreak or not. For now, investigators say the practical advice is unchanged regardless of brand: check any broccoli sprouting seed against the recalled lot numbers, and when in doubt, throw it out.