Prague: European food and health agencies traced a stubborn wave of Salmonella infections to flavoured instant-noodle products at the start of July, warning that the outbreak has reached thirteen EU and EEA countries and the United Kingdom. Investigators at the European Food Safety Authority and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control counted 106 confirmed cases between November 2025 and June 2026, with at least 49 people admitted to hospital.

The illness, caused by the Salmonella Stanley strain, has hit children and young adults hardest, an unusual pattern that helped epidemiologists narrow the source. Cases surfaced in Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The spread across so many markets points to a single contaminated product line moving through the bloc’s tightly linked food trade, and it explains why investigators moved quickly to pool their data.

Food safety in the Union rests on the principle that a problem detected in one member state must reach all of them at once. The two agencies coordinate through the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed, which lets national authorities pull suspect batches, trace ingredients back to their origin and share laboratory fingerprints of the bacteria. Whole-genome sequencing let scientists confirm that cases in distant countries carried the same strain, turning a scatter of local infections into a recognised multi-country event.

Salmonella remains one of the most reported causes of foodborne illness in Europe, and most patients recover without lasting harm. The bacteria can nonetheless cause severe dehydration and, in vulnerable people, spread beyond the gut. The hospitalisation rate in this outbreak, close to one in two confirmed cases, has pushed investigators to treat it as a serious event rather than a routine seasonal cluster.

The agencies have urged consumers to check whether recalled noodle products sit in their cupboards and to follow national withdrawal notices. They also stress the ordinary defences that blunt any Salmonella risk, from thorough cooking to careful hand-washing and keeping raw and ready-to-eat foods apart. Producers, for their part, face renewed scrutiny of the ingredients and seasoning powders that can carry the bacteria into an otherwise dry product before it ever reaches a shelf.

The joint assessment, along with the list of affected batches, appears on the EFSA outbreak page. Both agencies say the event remains active, and they expect further cases to surface as national laboratories match older infections to the same strain.