On Friday, Christina Jewett, Alice Callahan and Caroline Hopkins Legaspi of the New York Times reported FDA’s finding in the terms it deserved. Inspectors found Cyclospora in water from a tank of outgoing wastewater at the Taylor Farms de Mexico plant that chopped the lettuce, and in sediment from a drainage ditch at an iceberg grower that supplied it, and the Times called that strong new evidence that the summer’s outbreak came from the company’s lettuce. That is the right reading. Jewett, who covers FDA, and Julie Creswell wrote the Times story in August, with Legaspi contributing, that put dates on Michigan’s three requests to Taco Bell for a supplier list and on the rule that would have required an answer in a day. When I think the Times is behind the record, I say so. On Friday it was not, and the three of them deserve the credit.
The Times has the numbers right: nearly 13,000 illnesses, 570 hospitalizations and two deaths in twenty-one states, the largest cyclosporiasis outbreak on record. FDA’s final count is 12,883. CDC declared the outbreak over on September 11, and FDA closed its investigation on October 2. I wrote up FDA’s update and its ten commitments for 2027 on Friday and will not repeat them.
What FDA confirmed
FDA’s words, nearly: the positive samples show the parasite was present where the lettuce was grown and processed, and they add to the strong epidemiological data and traceback convergence supporting the link between this outbreak and the recalled shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico. In July, Michigan’s interviews and Taco Bell’s supply chain records pointed at one supplier. Taylor Farms recalled the lettuce itself, 236,192 cases sold to Walmart, Subway, Jack in the Box, Taco Bell and Sysco. On August 20, CDC said genotyping showed the parasites from sick people were genetically related to one another. Now the parasite is in the water leaving the plant and the ditch beside the field. The source question is closed. The epidemiology, the traceback, the company’s own recall, the patient genotyping and the environmental samples point to the same place.
What FDA says it cannot yet determine is how the parasite got onto the lettuce, and whether the genotypes of the two environmental samples match the patients. Both have been typed; the comparison is still being analyzed. Those are mechanism questions, not the source question, and the company’s statement runs the two together. The Times drew one more inference: Cyclospora cayetanensis spreads only through human feces, so the parasite in that tank and that ditch came from an infected person on or near those operations.
What Taylor Farms told the Times
The company told the Times that the plant has not reopened since production was suspended in July, that it is working with its research team on enhanced safety protocols from the field to the facility, that the independent farm where one sample was found is no longer in its supplier program, and that trust is earned by what it does. It also emphasized, as the Times put it, FDA’s conclusion that there is not enough evidence to determine where the contamination occurred. It has said before that it spends more than $200 million a year on food safety.
Read the one word. FDA said how. The company said where. Where has an answer: the parasite was found at a grower in its supplier program and in a tank of its own wastewater. Changing how to where turns an open question about mechanism into a closed question about geography, and the company then answers the geography by dropping the grower. The tank is at the plant. The plant is the company’s.
What the company has said since July, and what it has not
The record is short. On July 17 the company said FDA’s tracing pointed to a specific independent farm in Mexico. FDA now says several farms and the plant, and found the parasite at both. In August the company told the Times it runs a fecal indicator testing program covering all of its water sources and that every result was negative. Indicator tests look for bacteria; FDA’s own method for Cyclospora in agricultural water looks for the parasite. The company’s information hub, last modified September 1, says roughly 2,000 of its own samples found no positives, that its water is tested for indicator organisms, and that decisions will wait for its third-party review and the FDA investigation. The FDA investigation has concluded. The page has not moved, and the newsroom lists no release on the outbreak.
Here is what the company has not said, to the Times or to anyone. How the parasite got into a tank of water leaving its own plant. Whether it ever tested that wastewater for the parasite rather than for indicator bacteria. What the independent third-party review it promised in July found, and whether it will be published. What enhanced safety protocols means in practice: a treatment step, a different water source, a worker health program, or all three. When the plant will reopen and on what showing. And an answer to Representative Garcia’s July 27 request for its records back to 2013.
In 2013, after the last Cyclospora outbreak traced to this plant, the company said it would test its water, and FDA reopened the plant on that promise. Thirteen years later I could not find one public result. Enhanced safety protocols is also a sentence. The question for 2027 is whether it stays one.
What I told the Times, and what I have been asking for since July
The Times quoted me on five things. First, there is more to learn from the environmental samples and from patients’ stool, and FDA should publish the genotype comparison with a date attached. Second, before the next growing season the federal government should pay to develop a routine water test for Cyclospora, which does not exist. Kalmia Kniel of the University of Delaware and her colleagues asked USDA for about $10 million to build one four years running and were not funded, as the Times reported in August; USDA says its reviewers chose other projects. Third, enforce the rule requiring supply chain records within twenty-four hours of a product being implicated. Michigan asked Taco Bell on July 1, July 3 and July 6, and FDA had complete records on July 13. The traceability rule that would have required an answer in a day was delayed to July 2028, and Congress then barred FDA from spending a dollar to enforce it before then. The Times itself found that the delay may have slowed the response. Fourth, inspect. FDA had not visited the Doctor Mora plant since 2019; FSMA set a goal of 19,200 foreign inspections a year by 2016, and in 2025 the agency made about 1,100.
Fifth, an answer for the roughly 7,000 confirmed cases this summer that were never tied to any food. CDC counted 19,883 laboratory-confirmed domestic cases with onsets between May 1 and August 31. Of those, 12,883 are in this outbreak. The rest have no name.
None of that is new. Since July I have asked FDA to grant STOP Foodborne Illness’s pending petition and name the growers, asked Congress to unwind the enforcement bar as eleven consumer and food safety organizations did in August, asked for the shelved Beltsville Cyclospora research to be funded, and asked for a hearing. Fifteen congressional letters have gone to FDA, CDC, HHS, USDA and Taylor Farms since July. None has a published answer, and no committee has noticed a hearing. Jim Gorny, who retired from FDA in 2024, told the Times that without knowing how the lettuce was contaminated, the new measures are the same strategies tried again in hope of a different result; Frank Yiannas, who ran food policy at FDA from 2018 to 2023, hopes this summer becomes a catalyst. I would put it less gently. The parasite was found in the water. The company has a page that says it is waiting for FDA. FDA has a list of ten commitments and one date. Congress has a rider.
Marler Clark represents about 500 people sickened in this outbreak and has filed suits in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Kansas, Missouri and Illinois.
Three reporters put FDA’s finding, the company’s answer and the open questions in one place on Friday, which is more than the company’s website has done since September 1 and more than any committee of Congress has done since July. The next thing worth printing is the genotype comparison, and after that the investigation report that says what the water looked like. Jewett, Callahan and Legaspi will read both. The company should assume so.
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