> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.foodsafetynews.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Publisher’s Platform: Radical Transparency? What I Am Asking the FDA to Do Is Not Radical at All
- URL: https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2026/10/publishers-platform-radical-transparency-what-i-am-asking-the-fda-to-do-is-not-radical-at-all/
- Published: 2026-10-31T16:52:25.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-31T16:52:25.000Z
- Description: Two citizen petitions, a phrase HHS made its motto, and a DOJ opinion that says the agency can act now
- Author: Bill Marler
- Tags: Opinion & Contributed Articles

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has rightly made “radical transparency” the motto of his Department of Health and Human Services. HHS even has a [page](https://www.hhs.gov/radical-transparency?ref=foodsafetynews.com) by that name. I think it is a good motto, and I want to help Secretary Kennedy and Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas deliver on it in food safety, with two citizen petitions that ask for nothing the federal government has not already done, has not already said it believes in, and, as of October 26, has not been told by the Department of Justice that it has the authority to do. These petitions are meant as a hand up.

Before getting to the petitions, it is worth looking at where the phrase came from and how it found its way into food safety, because HHS and FDA put it there themselves.

**Where “radical transparency” came from**

The phrase did not start in Washington. It is a management idea popularized by Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, who built his hedge fund around what he called [radical truth and radical transparency](https://archive.harbus.org/2018/radical-transparency-with-bridgewater-founder-ray-dalio/?ref=foodsafetynews.com) and pitched it in a widely watched [2017 TED talk](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/29/ray-dalio-says-dont-pull-punches-when-you-criticize-your-boss.html?ref=foodsafetynews.com). Dalio’s own summary of the business case is worth keeping in mind for what follows: [if you are handling things well, radical transparency will make that clear](https://fortune.com/2023/07/11/ray-dalio-leadership-management-advice-bridgewater-associates-careers?ref=foodsafetynews.com), and if you are handling things badly, it will make that clear too.

Kennedy made it his own at his confirmation hearings. Before the Senate Finance Committee on January 29, 2025, he [promised “radical transparency”](https://medicaleconomics.com/view/trump-nominee-for-hhs-secretary-rfk-jr-faces-senate-scrutiny-in-first-confirmation-hearing?ref=foodsafetynews.com) within the department. Answering Senator Grassley, he said that if Congress wanted information, [the doors are open](https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2025/01/29/rfk-jr-faces-senate-grilling-during-confirmation-hearing?ref=foodsafetynews.com). And he added a line every outbreak investigator should tape to the wall: [“We should tell Americans when we don’t know.”](https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/regulatory/rfk-faces-first-round-questioning-senators?ref=foodsafetynews.com)

Three weeks later, in his [first address to HHS staff](https://news.bgov.com/banking-law/rfk-jr-says-hhs-to-remove-conflicts-of-interests-on-committees?ref=foodsafetynews.com) on February 18, 2025, he gave the idea its philosophical core: “Only through radical transparency can we provide Americans with genuine informed consent, which is the bedrock and the foundation stone of democracy.”

At the start, the phrase was mostly about Congress, conflicts of interest and vaccines. It did not stay there.

**How it moved into food, then into outbreaks and recalls**

On March 10, 2025, HHS directed FDA to explore closing the self-affirmed GRAS pathway, and the [press release](https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2025/03/10/hhs-secretary-kennedy-directs-fda-explore-rulemaking-eliminate-pathway-companies-self-affirm-food-ingredients-safe.html?ref=foodsafetynews.com) said HHS and FDA “are committed to promoting radical transparency to make sure all Americans know what is in their food.” That is the first time I can find the phrase attached to food.

Marty Makary, then FDA’s incoming commissioner, brought it with him. In his confirmation testimony he described a [generational opportunity to usher in radical transparency](https://www.dlapiper.com/insights/publications/food-and-beverage-news-and-trends/2025/food-and-beverage-news-and-trends-march-21-2025?ref=foodsafetynews.com). Then, on July 9, 2025, FDA sent a [letter to food industry leaders](https://www.fda.gov/food/recalls-outbreaks-emergencies/fda-encourages-food-industry-leaders-streamline-enhance-product-recall-communications-public-and?ref=foodsafetynews.com) about recall communications that said this: “At the FDA, we believe that radical transparency in food safety and nutrition actions is key to reducing foodborne illness and chronic disease.” Read that again. Foodborne illness. Recalls. Radical transparency. FDA’s words, not mine.

The next day, FDA published more than 200 drug rejection letters under the headline [“FDA Embraces Radical Transparency”](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-embraces-radical-transparency-publishing-complete-response-letters?ref=foodsafetynews.com), and in September it announced it would [release them in real time](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-announces-real-time-release-complete-response-letters-posts-previously-unpublished-batch-89?ref=foodsafetynews.com), calling radical transparency “one of the guiding principles of this administration.” Those letters are redacted for confidential commercial information, but, in FDA’s words, they “will contain company names.” Hold that thought.

On September 24, 2025, FDA’s food program launched Executive Incident Summary abstracts for closed outbreak investigations. The [constituent update](https://www.fda.gov/food/hfp-constituent-updates/fda-provides-additional-transparency-around-foodborne-outbreaks-and-investigations-sharing-executive?ref=foodsafetynews.com) opened: “The FDA is reinforcing our commitment to radical transparency to ensure Americans know what is in their food and that it is safe to consume.” Both the recall letter and the abstracts came out of FDA’s food program, led at the time by Deputy Commissioner for Food [Kyle Diamantas](https://www.packaginglaw.com/news/deputy-commissioner-food-kyle-diamantas-elevated-acting-fda-commissioner-following-makary?ref=foodsafetynews.com). By then the phrase had become the administration’s brand more broadly; that same month the Senate HELP Committee held a hearing titled [“Restoring Trust Through Radical Transparency.”](https://www.amcp.org/sites/default/files/2025-09/Legislative%20Update-%20Former%20CDC%20Director%20Dr.%20Susan%20Monarez%20Testifies%20Before%20Senate%20HELP%20Committee.pdf?ref=foodsafetynews.com)

The people have changed since then; the commitments have not. Makary [resigned in May 2026](https://www.michiganpublic.org/2026-05-12/fda-commissioner-resigns-after-tumultuous-tenure?ref=foodsafetynews.com), and Diamantas, the same official whose food program wrote radical transparency into the recall letter and the outbreak abstracts, has been [acting commissioner](https://www.raps.org/resource/trump-confirms-makary-is-out-at-fda.html?ref=foodsafetynews.com) ever since. In August, President Trump [nominated Dr. Heidi Overton](https://www.aabb.org/news-resources/news/article/2026/08/19/trump-nominates-heidi-overton-as-next-fda-commissioner?ref=foodsafetynews.com) to be the next commissioner. The commitments the agency put in writing are still there for its leaders to build on, and that continuity is an asset.

For my part, the place to start is food safety, where HHS and FDA have already laid a strong foundation in their own words.

**The unfinished part**

The outbreak abstracts were a real step forward, and FDA deserves credit for them. The one piece still missing is the piece the public most needs: who and where. Food Safety News reported that FDA has withheld [company names in its mango outbreak summary](https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2026/04/fda-withholds-company-names-in-report-on-mango-outbreak), and Food Safety Magazine described a summary of a fatal Listeria outbreak in which FDA [redacted all key details](https://www.food-safety.com/articles/11217-fda-redacts-all-key-details-in-summary-of-fatal-listeriosis-outbreak-linked-to-produce?ref=foodsafetynews.com), down to the states where the patients lived. When Stop Foodborne Illness [petitioned FDA in February](https://stopfoodborneillness.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/STOP-FDA-HHS-CCI-Petition-Final-2.4.2026.pdf?ref=foodsafetynews.com) to stop treating company names as confidential, invoking radical transparency, FDA answered that the names are protected by the Trade Secrets Act. That was an honest statement of the legal question the agency believed it faced, and, as I explain below, that question now has an answer.

The cost of that gap shows up in real outbreaks. In September FDA closed a romaine E. coli investigation and named no grower, no processor and no brand. In October, in a 50-person E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to chicken wraps, the public learned the brand from a lawsuit and a newspaper, not from FDA or FSIS – although FSIS later confirmed the source to a reporter (I represent plaintiffs in that outbreak). However, when FDA [declared that outbreak over](https://www.marlerblog.com/case-news/fda-says-the-trader-joes-chicken-wrap-e-coli-outbreak-is-over-and-that-telling-you-more-would-not-have-provided-consumers-with-an-action-section-705b/?ref=foodsafetynews.com) on October 28, its entry still did not name the brand, the maker or the states, and it explained that more detailed product information would not have given consumers an action they could take to prevent illness. I understand the reasoning, but it assumes the only reason to name a food is so people can throw it out. As I explain below, that is not the only consumer who needs to know.

**Not who might have been the source, but who was**

I want to be clear about one thing, because it is the heart of both petitions. I am not asking FDA to name every firm that might have been the source of an outbreak, or to publish working hypotheses while an investigation is still sorting out the facts. Everyone remembers the 2008 tomato warning that turned out to be peppers. I am asking FDA to name the firm its own investigation found actually was the source.

The 2024 romaine outbreak is the clearest example I know. That fall, an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to romaine sickened 89 people in 15 states, hospitalized 36, caused seven cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome and killed one person. FDA closed the investigation with the word romaine and nothing more. When the traceback summary was first released, the processor, the grower and the ranch were blacked out. When it was later released without redactions, only after firms in the supply chain signed authorizations consenting to the release of their own information, the same document showed that the traceback had [converged on one processor and one grower](https://www.marlerblog.com/case-news/the-2024-romaine-e-coli-outbreak-had-a-name-the-whole-time-the-fda-just-would-not-say-it-transparency-should-not-be-an-option/?ref=foodsafetynews.com). There was no uncertainty to protect. The government had the answer the whole time, and the public learned it through records requests more than a year later, after the season, the product and any chance to act had passed.

That is the line the petitions draw: disclosure of what FDA has confirmed, through the same traceback and laboratory evidence it relies on to close an investigation, and not of what it merely suspects.

**The two petitions**

That is why I am filing two citizen petitions together.

The first, on outbreak firm disclosure, asks FDA to amend its regulations to say that the name and location of a firm is not confidential commercial information when epidemiologic evidence implicates a food in an outbreak and traceback or laboratory evidence, including whole genome sequencing, identifies the firm as the source of the contaminated food. That is the same evidence FDA already uses to close an investigation, and it is not a suspect list. It asks FDA to disclose implicated growers, processors and distributors whether or not there is a recall, and to finish the transparency initiative it started by publishing those abstracts without redacting firm names.

The second, on recall consignee lists, asks FDA to publish the list of retail stores that received a recalled food in every Class I recall (the kind that can cause serious illness or death) and to classify every food recall, and publish the classification, within a set number of days.

That is it. Neither petition asks FDA to reveal a recipe, a process, a customer price or anything else that is a genuine trade secret. They ask for who and where.

**Why none of this is radical**

Start with USDA. For meat and poultry, FSIS has published retail consignee lists in Class I recalls under a [final rule adopted in July 2008](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2008-07-17/pdf/E8-16221.pdf?ref=foodsafetynews.com), during the Bush administration. A consumer who bought recalled ground beef can find out whether their store got it. A consumer who bought recalled cheese, sprouts or bagged salad usually cannot. Eighteen years on, the beef and poultry industries are still standing.

Congress noticed the gap. In the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, it told FDA, in its new [mandatory recall provision](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/350l?ref=foodsafetynews.com), to consider USDA’s consignee policy. FDA did and wrote a [guidance document](https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/public-availability-lists-retail-consignees-effectuate-certain-human-and-animal-food-recalls?ref=foodsafetynews.com) saying it would publish consignee lists in some cases.

FDA itself has named farms, processors and brands in the same circumstances it faces today, [at least eight times since 2006](https://www.marlerblog.com/case-news/fda-said-the-romaine-was-gone-so-it-named-no-grower-it-has-named-farms-processors-and-brands-in-that-exact-situation-before-here-are-eight/?ref=foodsafetynews.com). States do it routinely.

And then there are those drug rejection letters. FDA has already decided, under the banner of radical transparency, that a drug company’s name is not the confidential part of a letter rejecting its application. Applying that same principle to food would bring the agency’s two halves into line: if a pharmaceutical company’s name can be published with a failed application, the name of a farm that whole genome sequencing has tied to children on dialysis can be too.

None of this is radical. It is a proven practice waiting to be adopted.

**Good for consumers**

Kennedy said radical transparency is how Americans get “genuine informed consent.” You cannot consent to anything about a food when the government knows who made it and will not say. A named firm and a published store list let a family check their refrigerator, let a doctor connect a patient’s illness to a source, and let a health department find cases it would otherwise miss. Over time, names build a track record, so consumers can tell which companies keep turning up in outbreak after outbreak.

**Gross deception of the consumer, and who the consumer is**

Section 705(b) of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act lets FDA share information about food in situations involving, in the Commissioner’s opinion, imminent danger to health or gross deception of the consumer. Most of the conversation about outbreak disclosure has focused on the first of those, imminent danger. The second deserves just as much attention, and I think it is the more natural fit for what these petitions ask.

Think about who the consumer is. It is the mom and dad in the grocery aisle trying to buy what is safe for their kids. It is also the buyer for Walmart or Taco Bell, or for a school district or a hospital, deciding which supplier to keep and which to drop. Every one of them makes that decision on the information available. When FDA has confirmed which company’s food made people sick and that fact stays in the file, each of those decisions is made on a record the government knows is materially incomplete. The parents cannot steer around a brand, and the buyer cannot weigh a supplier’s record, that FDA has already identified.

Deception does not have to be a false statement; an omission can mislead just as surely. A commodity-only advisory that leaves shoppers blaming every grower of a crop, a firm publicly denying it was the source while the agency’s traceback converged on it, or an outbreak table that still lists a food as “suspect” after a federal agency has confirmed it to the press each leaves consumers with a false picture that FDA holds the record to correct. And unlike imminent danger, deception does not end when people stop getting sick. The parent and the buyer are still making choices next season.

The limiting principle is FDA’s own knowledge. This ground reaches what the agency has confirmed, not its working hypotheses, which is exactly the line the petitions draw. I [wrote about this in more detail](https://www.marlerblog.com/case-news/fda-says-the-trader-joes-chicken-wrap-e-coli-outbreak-is-over-and-that-telling-you-more-would-not-have-provided-consumers-with-an-action-section-705b/?ref=foodsafetynews.com) when FDA closed the chicken wrap outbreak, and I have revised both petitions to rest on it.

**Good for business**

This is the part the industry should hear most clearly. When the government names a commodity and stops, consumers avoid the whole commodity. During this summer’s Cyclospora outbreak, Numerator data reported by [Grocery Dive](https://www.grocerydive.com/news/cyclospora-outbreak-produce-sales-numerator/828345/?ref=foodsafetynews.com) showed that 6.5 million households stopped buying salad mixes and kits in a single month. That cost fell on every grower and processor in the category, including the ones who did everything right. In 2008, tomato growers lost a season to a Salmonella outbreak that turned out to be peppers. Anonymity does not prevent harm; it spreads one firm’s harm across an entire industry.

A name is the only thing that separates the firm that caused an outbreak from the competitors who did not. It lets a buyer at a national chain weigh a supplier’s history the way a parent weighs a brand, lets insurers price risk and gives every firm a reason to find its problem before next season. Ray Dalio would recognize the logic: if you are running a safe operation, transparency makes that clear.

**Good for HHS and FDA**

The agencies promised to rebuild public trust. Few things would build trust faster than the public hearing the name of an implicated firm from FDA first, rather than from a court filing or a reporter. A clear rule also gets FDA out of the business of making ad hoc, case-by-case judgments that look inconsistent from the outside, and it makes the food program consistent with what FDA is already doing for drugs. It lets the agency finish an initiative it launched itself. And it is a concrete, announceable win: no new statute, no new appropriation, a rule FDA can write on its own.

**And now DOJ says FDA has the authority**

The sticking point for FDA has been legal, and it has been a fair one: the agency has said the Trade Secrets Act ties its hands. On October 26, 2026, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel answered that argument in an [opinion addressed to HHS](https://www.marlerblog.com/files/2026/10/2026-10-26-fda-cci-disclosure.pdf?ref=foodsafetynews.com).

OLC agreed that FDA’s current regulations generally do not authorize disclosure of supply chain information, so the Trade Secrets Act largely forbids it, and that the existing route through 21 CFR 20.91 is exceedingly narrow in practice. But it concluded that section 705(b) of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, together with FDA’s rulemaking authority in section 701(a), permits the agency to amend its regulations to authorize disclosure of the names and locations of firms in a supply chain in situations involving imminent danger to health or gross deception of the consumer. Disclosure under such a regulation, OLC said, would be authorized by law and would not violate the Trade Secrets Act.

OLC also drew a line: a section 705(b) regulation authorizing disclosure after an outbreak has already ended would likely be inconsistent with the statute. That is imminent-danger logic, since an outbreak’s danger ends. But OLC treated the two statutory conditions as independent, allowing a regulation that permits disclosure when either one is met, and deception of the consumer does not end with the last illness. OLC did not decide whether its timing limit reaches the deception ground, and I have said so in the petition. The petitions also rest on a separate rule that a firm’s name and location simply is not confidential commercial information in the first place, so FDA has more than one sound path.

In other words, the obstacle has never been the statute. It has been FDA’s own regulations, and the Department’s lawyers have now told HHS that FDA can change them. The petitions ask it to.

**Secretary Kennedy, Acting Commissioner Diamantas, Dr. Overton**

HHS and FDA have already done the hard part: they made the commitment, and they put it in writing for food, in the GRAS announcement, in the recall letter to industry and in the launch of the outbreak abstracts. Mr. Diamantas, those last two came from the food program you ran. These petitions offer a way to complete that work and put your name on the result. You are also a lawyer, the first to lead the agency, and you will recognize that the OLC opinion clears the legal path the agency has long said it needed. Dr. Overton, if you are confirmed, this would be a meaningful early win to carry forward. And none of it requires anything radical. It is ordinary transparency, the kind USDA has practiced since 2008, that FDA has used at least eight times, that Congress asked you to consider in 2011, that you already apply to drug companies, and that the Justice Department says you have the authority to adopt.

Secretary Kennedy said we should tell Americans when we don’t know. These petitions ask for the other half of that promise, telling them when we do. I hope HHS and FDA will take it, and I am glad to help however I can.

If you would like a copy of either petition, or would like to file a supportive comment once they are docketed, email me at bmarler@marlerclark.com.