The first person in this outbreak gave a sample on March 6, 2023. The supplier was not identified until the spring of 2026.
In between, the genetic fingerprint of the bacteria that made them sick sat in a national database, matching new isolates as they appeared, one or two at a time, across three years and eventually four states. The FDA describes it as a multi-state, multi-year outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes infections, and the phrase multi-year is doing a great deal of work.
