FDA withholds company names in report on mango outbreak

The FDA has issued a report about a Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak linked to mangoes but has redacted key information, including what companies were involved.

The Executive Incident Summary Abstract covers an outbreak of 56 cases, but the states involved have been redacted. The Food and Drug Administration also redacted the name of the importer of the mangoes, the country where the fruit was grown and the names of all firms involved in the outbreak.

Since September 2025, the FDA has been posting Executive Incident Summary Abstracts as a show of “radical transparency” touted by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But the reports have been heavily redacted to protect confidential corporate information.

In February this year, The nonprofit Stop Foodborne Illness submitted a petition to FDA urging the agency to adopt a policy of publicly disclosing the names of all companies associated with foodborne illness outbreaks, regardless of whether there is a related recall, arguing that the legal basis on which FDA protects company information is inconsistent. The agency responded saying that the information withheld is covered by the trade secrets act.

The mango outbreak
The FDA received notice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Nov. 20, 2025, of a cluster of illnesses caused by Salmonella Saintpaul. Local and state public health officials interviewed the sick people and established by the end of December 2025 that mangoes were the suspected food.

The FDA initiated traceback on mango exposures of six patients from (redacted) points of service, including (redacted) traceback legs, with separate supply chains, the details of which were also redacted.

The traceback identified a common mango importer. The importer and the country from which the mangoes originated have been redacted, despite “strong epidemiological association and traceback convergence” confirming these sources, according to the FDA’s report.

Problems with traceback caused the outbreak investigation to be closed with uncertainties, including the source of the mangoes, which was not possible because there was no brand information available. Incomplete grower records from the importer of record also caused investigators problems, as did the comingling of product lots in shipments and the lack of lot code traceability both within production facilities and from distribution centers to retail locations.

The FDA did implement increased screening for (redacted) suppliers of mango to a redacted firm. Samples were not collected because of the timing of identification of the firms and the end of the harvest season in the redacted country of origin.