Go to your refrigerator right now. If you have eggs with the code P-1950 or 0840962 printed in ink on the side of the carton — not the top — and a sell-by date anywhere between July 20 and August 17, 2026, you may have a recalled product in your home. Throw them out today. An ongoing federal investigation has linked those eggs to 98 confirmed Salmonella illnesses across 17 states, with 26 people hospitalized — and the strain causing those illnesses is resistant to the antibiotic doctors most commonly reach for when Salmonella turns serious.

Those cartons don't expire until August 17. Today is August 2. There are 15 days left in this recall window, and the eggs are still in homes, according to the FDA's active outbreak investigation.

What Midwest Poultry Services Recalled

On July 22, 2026, Midwest Poultry Services, L.P. — a family-owned Indiana producer that operates two farms in Texas — voluntarily recalled 1,589,577 dozen shell eggs, totaling roughly 19 million individual eggs, after identifying possible Salmonella contamination. The recalled eggs are white shell eggs and brown cage-free shell eggs produced at those Texas farms between June 6 and July 3, 2026. They were distributed to foodservice and retail customers in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana — and sold under the brand names Kroger, Simple Truth, Brookshire's, Country Morning, and Cal-Maine Sunups across Kroger stores in Texas and Louisiana, and Brookshire Grocery Company stores (including Super 1 Foods and Spring Market locations) in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Mississippi.

The company said it identified the problem through proactive environmental monitoring and root cause analysis at its two Texas farms, and immediately halted distribution from those facilities. Midwest Poultry also began diverting eggs to a breaking plant for pasteurization, which kills Salmonella. In a statement, the company said it was not aware of any specific illnesses linked to its products at the time of the recall.

The FDA posted the recall notice as a public health service and launched its own investigation alongside the CDC.

How to Identify Recalled Cartons

Identifying recalled eggs requires checking the side of the carton, not the top. The relevant codes are printed in date-coding ink and may appear on either the left or right side.

A carton is recalled if it shows both of the following: one of the two plant codes — either P-1950 or 0840962 — and a Julian date between 157 and 184. In 2026, Julian date 157 corresponds to June 6 and Julian date 184 to July 3. Sell-by or best-by dates on recalled cartons fall between July 20 and August 17, 2026, per the full recalled product table.

The FDA explicitly advises: if you stored eggs outside their original packaging and cannot determine whether they are part of the recall, throw them away.

The full range of recalled products spans six-packs to 60-count cases, across Kroger Large, Extra Large, Medium, and Jumbo cartons; Simple Truth Cage Free Brown eggs in Medium, Large, and 24-count; Brookshire's Large, Extra Large, Jumbo, and 60-count cases; Country Morning Large, Extra Large, Medium, and Jumbo; Sunups Medium; and bulk institutional cases with no UPC.

To return recalled eggs for a full refund, bring them to the store of purchase. For questions, Midwest Poultry Services can be reached at 574-405-9531 (Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. ET) or at recallassistance@mpseggs.com.

Where People Got Sick — and When

The scale of this outbreak is concentrated in a way that deserves specific attention. Of the 98 confirmed cases reported to the CDC as of July 24, 2026, 73 — nearly three out of four — are in Texas, according to the CDC investigation update. Louisiana has five confirmed cases; Arizona has four; Georgia and New Mexico each have two; and California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and West Virginia each have one.

Twenty-six people — representing 36% of the 72 patients who provided relevant information — were hospitalized. No deaths have been reported. Patient ages range from under one year to 81, with a median age of 48.

Of 44 people interviewed about their eating habits, 40 — 91% — reported consuming shell eggs in the period before falling ill, giving investigators strong epidemiological grounds to link the outbreak to eggs.

There is a detail in the timeline that matters and is easy to miss: illness onset dates stretch back to November 21, 2025 — more than seven months before Midwest Poultry's recalled eggs were even produced. The recalled production window runs from June 6 to July 3, 2026. The FDA has acknowledged that Midwest Poultry Services' eggs do not explain all cases and that additional investigation is ongoing to determine if there are other sources. The original source of the earliest cases has not yet been publicly identified. The outbreak investigation remains open.

What the Antibiotic Resistance Finding Means for Patients

Whole genome sequencing of bacteria from all 98 confirmed patients predicted that the strain is nonsusceptible to ciprofloxacin and resistant to nalidixic acid — two antibiotics that are among the standard treatment options for severe Salmonella infections, according to the CDC's investigation update.

For most people who contract Salmonella, this finding changes nothing practical. Most cases resolve on their own within four to seven days, and antibiotics are not typically required. The CDC recommends antibiotics primarily for patients who develop severe or invasive illness — those whose infection spreads from the gastrointestinal tract into the bloodstream, a potentially life-threatening complication.

For those patients, the resistance profile matters directly: ciprofloxacin — a fluoroquinolone antibiotic — is frequently a first-line choice for serious Salmonella infections. A strain that is nonsusceptible to ciprofloxacin requires the treating physician to choose an alternative, such as ceftriaxone or azithromycin, based on susceptibility testing. The CDC advises healthcare providers to consult the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System for guidance on treating resistant Salmonella infections.

If you sought medical care and were diagnosed with Salmonella from eggs, it is worth telling your doctor that the outbreak strain has been predicted by WGS to be ciprofloxacin-nonsusceptible.

Why the Drug-Resistant Strain Is a Pattern, Not an Anomaly

The most significant finding in this outbreak — the one the headline food-safety coverage has underreported — is not that one producer's eggs carried a drug-resistant Salmonella strain. It is that this is the third time in thirteen months that an egg-linked Salmonella Enteritidis outbreak in the United States has involved a ciprofloxacin-nonsusceptible strain.

The June 2025 egg outbreak — linked to August Egg Company of California, which recalled over 20 million eggs, and ultimately confirmed 134 illnesses — involved a Salmonella Enteritidis strain that WGS predicted to be resistant to nalidixic acid and nonsusceptible to ciprofloxacin, per the CDC's June 2025 outbreak investigation. The August 2025 egg outbreak — linked to Country Eggs LLC — involved a strain with the same ciprofloxacin-nonsusceptible profile. The July 2026 outbreak involving Midwest Poultry Services carries the identical predicted AMR profile.

The CDC's description of the 2026 outbreak strain explicitly notes it "is related to a strain of Salmonella Enteritidis isolated from chicken, eggs, and backyard poultry" — language nearly identical to what appeared in the 2025 outbreak advisories.

The mechanism behind this resistance is well-documented. According to a study published in Frontiers in Public Health, the predominant driver of ciprofloxacin nonsusceptibility in Salmonella Enteritidis in the US is a point mutation in the gyrA gene — the gene that encodes DNA gyrase, which is the molecular target that ciprofloxacin binds to in order to block bacterial replication. When that binding site is mutated, the drug cannot do its job effectively. Critically, the study noted that closely related strains carrying this mutation "have been linked to human illnesses associated with consumption of commercial poultry products (e.g., meat and eggs)" — and have also been isolated from retail chicken meat and chickens at slaughter.

This is not a single-farm problem. The repeated appearance of ciprofloxacin-nonsusceptible Salmonella Enteritidis across multiple egg producers, multiple states, and three consecutive multistate outbreaks in 13 months suggests a reservoir of this resistant strain that exists beyond any individual operation. It is the kind of pattern that NARMS was built to track — and that public health agencies are actively monitoring.

How WGS Made This Investigation Possible

A brief note on the technology that made it possible to identify both the outbreak and its antibiotic profile without waiting weeks for traditional culture-based laboratory tests.

The CDC's outbreak investigation system relies on a national laboratory network called PulseNet, which has increasingly used whole genome sequencing to compare bacterial samples from patient illnesses and food sources, per a WGS foodborne outbreak review by the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health. WGS reads the complete DNA sequence of a bacterial isolate and compares it at the level of individual nucleotides against a database of previously sequenced strains. When multiple patient isolates share a nearly identical DNA fingerprint, investigators can conclude they were infected by the same bacterial lineage — even if those patients live in different states and have no apparent connection.

In this outbreak, WGS confirmed that all 98 patient samples carry the same outbreak strain. WGS also performed by the company's own third-party laboratory on farm samples from Midwest Poultry's Texas operations matched isolates to that same strain — the finding shared with the FDA on July 21, one day before the recall. Critically, WGS predicted the ciprofloxacin resistance profile from the genome sequence itself, before conventional susceptibility testing was complete, providing clinically relevant treatment information faster than traditional methods allow.

What Consumers Should Do

If you have potentially recalled eggs:

Check the side of every egg carton in your refrigerator for the codes P-1950 or 0840962, with a Julian date between 157 and 184 and a sell-by date between July 20 and August 17, 2026. If your carton meets these criteria, do not eat the eggs. Return them to the store of purchase for a full refund or discard them.

Wash all surfaces, utensils, and containers that may have come into contact with the eggs — including cutting boards, counter surfaces, mixing bowls, and refrigerator shelves — using hot, soapy water or running them through a dishwasher.

If you are experiencing symptoms:

Most people infected with Salmonella develop diarrhea, fever, and stomach cramps within 12 to 72 hours of consuming contaminated food, with symptoms typically lasting four to seven days. For most otherwise-healthy adults, the infection resolves on its own.

Seek medical care promptly if you experience any of the following:

• A fever higher than 102°F (38.9°C)
• Diarrhea lasting more than two days without improvement
• Bloody diarrhea
• Vomiting severe enough to prevent keeping liquids down
• Signs of dehydration, including decreased urination, a dry mouth or throat, or dizziness when standing

Children under five, adults over 65, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems face a higher risk of serious illness. For these groups, consultation with a healthcare provider is advisable even for milder symptoms.

The CDC notes that official case counts almost certainly understate the true scope of the outbreak, since many people who fall ill recover without ever seeing a doctor or submitting a sample for laboratory testing. In addition, recent illnesses may not yet be reflected in official counts, as it typically takes three to four weeks for cases to be confirmed and attributed to an ongoing outbreak, per the CDC investigation update.

The FDA's outbreak investigation page at fda.gov and the CDC's advisory at cdc.gov/salmonella are updated as the investigation evolves.

---

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I find out if my eggs are part of the Kroger Salmonella recall?

Turn your egg carton over to check its side panel — not the top. Look for a code printed in date-coding ink that reads either P-1950 or 0840962. If one of those codes is present and the Julian date on the carton falls between 157 and 184 (and the sell-by date falls between July 20 and August 17, 2026), the carton is recalled. If you transferred your eggs to another container and no longer have the original packaging, the FDA advises discarding them as a precaution.

What does it mean that the Salmonella strain is antibiotic-resistant?

The strain involved in this outbreak has been predicted by whole genome sequencing to be nonsusceptible to ciprofloxacin, a common first-line antibiotic for serious Salmonella infections. For most people, this changes nothing — antibiotics are not needed for typical Salmonella illness, which resolves on its own. But for patients who develop severe or invasive illness and require treatment, doctors may need to use an alternative antibiotic such as ceftriaxone instead. Tell your healthcare provider you ate eggs from a recalled batch, and mention this resistance finding if you are prescribed antibiotics.

Why are there Salmonella cases dating back to November 2025 if the recalled eggs were produced starting in June 2026?

This is an unresolved question the FDA is actively investigating. The recalled eggs from Midwest Poultry Services were produced between June 6 and July 3, 2026 — they cannot explain the illnesses that began in November 2025. The FDA has acknowledged that Midwest Poultry Services' eggs "do not account for all the illnesses in this outbreak" and that additional investigation is ongoing to identify other possible sources. The full scope of this outbreak — including its earliest cases — has not yet been explained.

Is this Salmonella outbreak the first of its kind in 2025–2026?

No. This is the third major egg-linked Salmonella Enteritidis outbreak since June 2025, and all three have involved a ciprofloxacin-nonsusceptible strain with a nearly identical antibiotic resistance profile. The June 2025 outbreak (linked to August Egg Company) ultimately confirmed 134 illnesses in ten states; the August 2025 outbreak (linked to Country Eggs LLC) affected 14 states and confirmed 105 illnesses. The repeated appearance of the same antibiotic-resistant strain across multiple producers and outbreaks over 13 months suggests a broader reservoir of this strain in the US commercial egg supply — not an isolated contamination event.