Taylor Farms

The Centers for Disease Control has declared the cyclosporiasis outbreak over.

It comes after the disease, tied to contaminated lettuce from a Taylor Farms facility, sickened thousands, sending hundreds to the hospital and killing two people.

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declared an end to that parasitic food outbreak with cases that were spanning back all the way to mid-July.

A total of nearly 13,000 people had become infected after eating tainted lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms.

Of those, nearly 600 were so sick they became hospitalized and two people with underlying conditions died.

The CDC says that the recalled lettuce products are no longer available in stores or restaurants.

Meantime, the CDC this morning declared the end of the cyclospora outbreak, saying the number of recent infections linked to the outbreak has declined significantly and the contaminated lettuce is no longer available in stores or restaurants.

The parasite linked to lettuce sourced in central Mexico and sold by Taylor Farms sickened more than 11,000 people and caused nearly 500 hospitalizations and two deaths.

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Food safety agencies were slow to respond to the outbreak due to mass layoffs and budget cuts enacted during the first year of the Trump administration.

Eventually, the government discovered the culprit was likely contaminated lettuce from Taylor Farms that was shipped to a number of fast food restaurants including Subway, Taco Bell, and KFC.

But even that discovery was botched.

The FDA later claimed that the sample of lettuce from Taylor Farms that initially tested positive for cyclospora was a false positive.

That allowed the company, which was a major donor to Trump and other right-wing politicians, to distance itself from the outbreak while quietly recalling all of its contaminated products.

And to this day, Taylor Farms still won't admit it was responsible for poisoning 20,000 people.

So what did we learn from all this? Is it actually safe to eat lettuce again? Fuck if I know.

The city of Denver sued the Department of Homeland Security seeking an injunction to block ICE agents from hanging around polling stations in November.

You literally have to audit every single label in your building.

Add to that the ongoing intense pressure on produce sourcing like the recent highly publicized cyclospora lettuce outbreaks that hit major suppliers like Taylor Farms and impacted massive brands like Taco Bell and physical supply chain has never been more legally and operationally dangerous.

OK, so let's summarize the operators reality right now.

On one side of the coin, you have this hyper regulated, terrifying supply chain where a mislabeled protein bar or a bad leaf of lettuce can trigger a multimillion dollar lawsuit.

What do we know about where the investigation is?

I think it's pretty clear that FDA has traced this back to Taylor Farms and in particular, I think some particular farms that they have.

I don't know that that's changed.

The really interesting thing for me is whether there's going to be policy changes as a result of this.

But what you're saying is that we pay attention to the actual products that are being recalled, but that doesn't mean that all of the mangoes in the store or all of the radishes, we should just avoid those.

Well, that's true, but it can be hard for consumers to tell the difference.

And in fact, when I worked at the Food and Drug Administration, one of the things we did with the pistachio outbreak was we had a page that explained which manufacturers were not involved in the outbreak and what their products were so that people could actually see where they could buy pistachios in addition to where they shouldn't because it can be confusing, especially if it's like Taylor Farms where the food shows up in different places like Taco Bell.

So we should be paying attention, but maybe not avoiding lettuce altogether for the rest of our lives.

because of Taco Bell's, like, sorry, guys.

Taylor Farms.

Yeah, it got real weird up there, and we've pulled the lettuce, but you might want to avoid Taco Bell.

Just

Well, just in closing, your other article, The Atlantic, Should We Be Afraid of Our Food, is about the food scare recently.

It's all been traced to Taylor Farms.

Talk about wanting to eat more fruit and vegetables.

You can't do it anymore