A recall of GreenWise Organic frozen berries sold at Publix stores has widened to cover all product lots after 12 people fell ill and four were hospitalized from suspected E. coli contamination.
Publix pulled every lot of its GreenWise Organic Whole Blueberries and GreenWise Organic Whole Mixed Berries from shelves across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The move came after the grocer's Chile-based supplier, Frutas y Hortalizas del Sur SA, issued a narrower recall earlier this month covering only 10-ounce beige bags of the frozen blueberries. Tests on that initial batch returned a presumptive positive result for E. coli O145:H28.
The expanded recall now covers both the 10-ounce and 48-ounce bags of blueberries and mixed berries, four separate products in all. The FDA reported that Publix conducted an internal stop sale of the berries at the end of June 2026, and the company cited "an abundance of caution" as its reason for broadening the action beyond the original supplier recall.
Twelve people have been sickened so far. Four required hospitalization. No deaths have been reported. All confirmed infections occurred among residents of Florida and Georgia, with illness onset dates ranging from May 11 to June 5, meaning some consumers were eating contaminated berries for weeks before any recall was announced.
Of nine individuals interviewed by investigators, seven reported eating frozen blueberries. Five of those seven specified GreenWise Organic Whole Blueberries purchased at Publix. The remaining two interviewed individuals did not report eating frozen blueberries, and three additional sickened people apparently were not interviewed at all, gaps the FDA has not publicly explained.
The agency acknowledged the investigation is still open.
"FDA and state partners are actively working to determine the source of contamination."
That statement offers no timeline and no indication of how far along the probe has progressed. Weeks after the first illnesses appeared, regulators still cannot say where the bacteria entered the supply chain.
E. coli O145:H28, the strain identified in the initial recall, is a Shiga toxin-producing variety. Contamination can occur when fruit is treated with water containing animal feces, a risk that rises with imported produce handled under varying sanitary standards. The berries in question were supplied by a Chilean company, Frutas y Hortalizas del Sur SA.
Freezing does not kill E. coli. The bacteria stop growing below roughly 45 degrees Fahrenheit but can survive temperatures as low as minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the berries thaw or reach a warm environment, a kitchen counter, a smoothie blender, the bacteria reactivate. Symptoms typically appear two to eight days after exposure, and most people recover within a week.
But for vulnerable populations, the consequences can be severe. Hemolytic uremic syndrome, a potentially life-threatening kidney complication, is most common in children under five, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems. Roughly 75,000 to 90,000 Americans are exposed to E. coli each year, and approximately 100 die from it annually. Those numbers make every delayed recall a matter of real stakes for families who trusted the product on their grocery store shelf.
Publix is urging customers not to eat any of the affected products and to discard them immediately or return them to a store for a full refund. The recall covers four UPC codes: 41415-06453 and 41415-12053 for the blueberries, and 41415-06753 and 41415-12153 for the mixed berries. Both the 10-ounce and 48-ounce sizes are included, and all lot numbers are affected.
Public safety incidents, whether a mass-casualty event at a public gathering or a contaminated product sitting in millions of home freezers, share a common thread: ordinary people bear the consequences of failures they had no part in creating.
The timeline here is worth sitting with. The first illness appeared on May 11. The last recorded onset was June 5. Publix's internal stop sale did not come until the end of June. That is roughly seven weeks from the first known case to the point when the berries finally came off the shelf, and only then did the recall expand to cover all lots and all sizes.
Whether the FDA or Publix could have moved faster is an open question. What is not open to debate is that consumers spent the better part of two months buying and eating a product that was already making people sick. Four of them ended up in the hospital.
When regulators say they are "actively working" but cannot name the contamination source weeks after the first hospitalizations, consumers are right to ask whether the system built to protect them is keeping pace with the supply chain it oversees. Imported food, distant suppliers, and slow recalls are a combination that leaves American families holding the bag, and in this case, the bag tested positive for E. coli.