Thomson International onion recall - Salmonella Newport (2020)

Jul 2020: a documented market event that overlapped the wholesale price windows of 2 tracked ingredients — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.

What happened

CDC and FDA investigated a multistate Salmonella Newport outbreak (1,127 reported illnesses across 48 states, 167 hospitalizations, no deaths, with illness onsets from June 19 to Sept 11, 2020) linked to onions supplied by Thomson International, Inc. of Bakersfield, California. On Aug 1, 2020 Thomson recalled red, yellow, white and sweet yellow onions shipped from May 1, 2020 onward, distributed nationwide to wholesalers, restaurants and retailers, removing the affected product from the market. Red onions were identified as the likely source.

Documented account from our open, cited registry (sources below). Shown as context beside the price record — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.

Affected ingredients

Why these ingredients were exposed

Each affected ingredient's public supply structure — where it comes from and how much it leans on imports. Context that makes the co-occurrence with a documented event legible, never its cause.

OnionsDomestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer (reliance ~20% by value). Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.
Red onionDomestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer (reliance ~20% by value). Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.

Reliance is a share of import value, a rough exposure proxy, not a supply-security score. It explains why an ingredient sits in the path of a documented event — not that the event caused any price move. Co-occurrence in time, never a cause.

The detected moves that overlapped

Each figure is a wholesale reference against its own ±26-week normal — a market move, never a delivered price.

No sustained wholesale move in our detected set falls inside this event's window. The event is documented; our public price series simply didn't flag a notable departure from normal for these ingredients then — an honest absence, not a hidden one.

What moved together

Co-occurrence, not cause

Onions

In Onions's 6 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:

Short rib3 of 6 moves
Pineapple2 of 6 moves
Pumpkin2 of 6 moves
Red potato2 of 6 moves
Russet potatoes2 of 6 moves

Red onion

In Red onion's 6 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:

Butternut squash3 of 6 moves
Eggplant3 of 6 moves
Bell pepper2 of 6 moves
Brussels sprouts2 of 6 moves
Collard greens2 of 6 moves

Moving in the same weeks is not one thing causing another — many of these share a growing region, a shipping lane, or an aisle. It is a directed, bounded count: in K of an ingredient's own notable moves, another ran the same way.

Sources

3 sources

Outbreak Investigation of Salmonella Newport: Red Onions (July 2020) — U.S. Food and Drug Administration
2020 Recalls of Food Products Associated with Onions from Thomson International, Inc. due to the Potential Risk of Salmonella — U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Outbreak of Salmonella Newport Infections Linked to Onions (July 2020) — U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Check your own invoice against this reference All market events

Documented events come from our open, cited registry (CC‑BY). Price moves are detected from public history (USDA/BLS/FRED) and shown as co-occurring context, never asserted as the cause. How events are picked.