Infant botulism from powdered formula was not a freak accident. It was foreseeable — and the people who could have prevented it chose to wait for sick babies instead.
For over thirty years I have heard the same line from every defendant: nobody could have seen this coming.
Over the past year, two powdered infant formulas
The phrase “Never let a serious crisis go to waste” is usually attributed to Rahm Emanuel and usually said with a wink — a crisis grabs the public’s attention and opens room for things that, in calmer times, never make it out of committee. I am going to say it without the wink.
For more
A father named Chris George spent the better part of a year trying to answer a question that should not have been hard to answer: that grew and processed the lettuce that nearly killed his son?
Colton George, now ten, was nine years old when he ate romaine contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 in the fall of
On Thursday, June 11, 2026, the FDA quietly posted to its website the document those of us investigating the ByHeart infant-botulism outbreak have waited months to see: the complete Establishment Inspection Report (EIR) for Blendhouse Allerton, LLC — the Iowa plant that produced ByHeart’s infant-formula base powder.
Credit where it is due: Bloomberg’s Anna Edney
Why the food industry should embrace whole genome sequencing (WGS) — even when it’s inconvenient
I few weeks ago I was supposed to give a talk about the pros and cons of WGS and the food industry. I never made it to the talk because my day job got in the way.
When I started suing
New York, Virginia, Maryland each have three illnesses, with one death in Maryland.
As of June 9, 2026, a total of 9 people infected with the outbreak strain of Listeria have been reported from 3 states. Sick people’s samples were collected on dates ranging from March 6, 2023, to May 10, 2026. Of 9 people with
Clostridium botulinum is an obligate anaerobic, spore-forming, Gram-positive bacillus whose primary, native habitat is the soil.[1] The bacterium that thrives in low-oxygen environments and produces botulinum neurotoxin, one of the most lethal biological substances known. While the bacteria themselves are usually harmless, the toxin they create attacks the nervous system and causes botulism, a severe
I have spent time sitting across kitchen tables from people whose lives were upended by a single meal. Some of those conversations stay with me.
The ones about raw milk and Guillain-Barré syndrome are near the top of that list, because they involve a complication most people have never heard of, caused by a bacterium