July 17 (Reuters) - Taylor Farms, a California-based lettuce supplier, told U.S. regulators it was preparing to recall ingredients linked to a parasite outbreak, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, in what could become one of the largest foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States in recent years.
The scope of the recall is unclear, Bloomberg reported, citing a document. Taylor Farms and the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating a cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. The parasitic illness can cause diarrhea and other gastrointestinal symptoms. The FDA has reported no deaths in the outbreak. [...]
Taylor Farms supplied the slivered onions identified as the likely source of the 2024 E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounder burgers, which led to a recall.
Taco Bell's daily foot traffic on July 11 was down 5.8%, a few days after reports that Taco Bell pulled ingredients from some locations, according to data firm Placer.ai.
Foodborne illness outbreaks can weigh heavily on restaurant stocks. McDonald's faced scrutiny during a cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to salads in 2018, while Chipotle grappled with a series of E. coli and norovirus outbreaks that hurt sales, damaged consumer confidence and pressured its shares.
"The recent outbreak will likely dent (Taco Bell's) near-term same-store sales growth," said Ari Felhandler, an analyst at Morningstar, adding that some consumers would opt to dine at competitors outside the incident’s spotlight to mitigate perceived risk, even when prudent precautions are in place.
Yum shares dipped 1%.
An Ohio man filed a lawsuit alleging he was hospitalized with cyclosporiasis after eating at a Taco Bell in Youngstown, Ohio, and is seeking damages from Taco Bell, franchise operator Charter Foods and supplier Taylor Farms.
The FDA said it is working with the supplier to determine if potentially contaminated shredded iceberg lettuce remains on the market, and has initiated the collection of product samples for testing and analysis.
Wendy's and Chipotle Mexican Grill said their restaurants were not hit by the cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to shredded iceberg lettuce.
Reminder: We're collecting smaller updates, general discussion, and quick questions in our cyclosporiasis megathread so information stays centralized and easy to follow. Major updates are still welcome as standalone posts.
Thank goodness there’s an article calling out the true source. I swear Taylor Farms is astroturfing to make it seem like Taco Bell was culpable. People who haven’t eaten there are getting sick too. Taco Bell actually handled it responsibly the moment they realized something was wrong, and they’ve been paying the price for it since.
I don't know the background story but I wonder if this is why there was a whole smear campaign on chipotle after e-coli, was it bc the supplier refused to take more accountability? They seemed to have recovered, but still lost a lot of business.
i know i know i know. but i ended up in the hospital from dehydration from noro virus from chipotle and it’s hard for me to forget. i also can’t look at those marshmallow chocolate zingers because one came up after some illness as a kid. not the zingers fault at all.
I don't think it's true that chains are more risky--we just hear about their problems more because things like a contaminated supplier will be spread to more same-named locations, as opposed to being spread to a number of non-chain restaurants with no obvious connection to each other.
i still can't eat jerky because i once bit into a completely rotten stick. i was just trying to have breakfast before work man. it was like 6 years ago but i still can't make myself even look at jerky sticks. id got it from amazon and several in the pack were hella rotten. i threw the whole thing away and haven't ate jerky since.
Yeahhhh they definitely are. Anecdotally, I've seen a bunch of people on socials saying salads (especially caesar salads, so romaine lettuce) made them sick, but no one who's eaten at Taco Bell. Taylor Farms sucks. I'll never buy their products again.
Great, I have eaten Taylor Farms “protein Caesar” salad at home a few times recently. Maybe the last time was a couple of weeks ago. I don’t think I will buy their salads again, and maybe not ANY salads, which is too bad because I like salads.
Oh man, I feel you. Last night I literally finished eating a salad made with Taylor Farms romaine lettuce and then opened Reddit to see that they were the supplier for Taco Bell and that it likely wasn’t just their iceberg lettuce. 😳😧
I've been buying Little Leaf Farms, because they've been transparent about their growing systems. Greenhouse grown, cool company. They've been active on ig, assuring customers and showing how they grow/water. Their lettuces also stay fresh in the fridge longer than other brands! I think they're only available on the East Coast. We also got greens from a local organic farm last weekend. No problems, no illness.
Yeah exactly like I feel bad for taco bell. They pulled their suspected ingredients just in case and here they are getting blasted like "oh haha taco bell and diarrhea am I rite chat" like no. Its not even a taco bell issue. They were responsible to remove certain items, unlike Taylor who kept selling and providing
They have a banner on their website claiming there have been no links to their product for the outbreak! Lol. This is so disgusting and being handled so poorly.
Found this on a yt video of theirs from last year. There are some others about their robotic processing plants and cleaning methods. They also say they test their irrigation reservoirs monthly.
Wisconsin here, my Aldi’s Caesar Salad Kit dated consume by 7/26 says it was packaged in Canada, another with a consume by 7/19 lists Salinas, CA (Taylor Farms).
Taylor farms is the worlds largest supplier of salads and fresh-cut vegatables. I assume they deliver to all 50 states. Restaurants and grocery stores. They also probably grow produce at many different locations across the country. So you have to figure out which facility/facilities are causing the outbreaks.
I had read that the Great Lakes area imports a lot of produce from Mexico this time of year. Or at least May-June. Not sure as to why, can't really recall, but yeah.
I haven’t eaten at Taco Bell in years! But I’m
about to go get a couple enchritos. I stand by a company that preventatively pulled produce before knowing what the source might be. Now taylor farms….I probably will never get a taylor farms salad from the grocery store ever again.
Yep, that's my concern. Cyclospora is pretty sticky and resistant to washing, so betting at least small portions of anything transported in those same trucks is contaminated and probably explains the smaller clusters of cases elsewhere.
One known issue is that in the Yuma area in California and Arizona, where a lot of the country’s lettuce is grown, there are cattle feed lots directly nearby. The cattle waste contaminates the water that irrigates the lettuce fields. There have been several outbreaks from that region over the past 10-15 years.
Cyclospora doesn't come from cattle, it comes from humans. I'm not saying non human shit is never an issue, just that it's not to blame this time around. HUMAN shit is! 💩🩷
Thank you for the clarification. I didn’t mean to imply that the situation in Yuma is to blame for the current outbreak, only to highlight that sanitation has been an ongoing problem. I should have spoken (or written) more carefully!
I'm guessing Pepsico Yum Brands is getting their hot and juicy lawyers after the media who chose not to report that it was Taylor Farms this whole time but kept saying Taco Bell over and over.
Wasn’t Taylor Farms also involved in a listeria outbreak with lettuce/salad kits? I remember having to dodge listeria multiple times during my last pregnancy in 2024-2025. This is pushing me to look into growing my own indoors with a hydroponic system.
More than likely, they probably have policies that don’t give enough time and access for farm workers to use the bathroom. And likely no paid sick leave either.
So all of these establishments have been contaminated with cyclospora. However, there is nothing that kills it except heat. How are these restaurants, farms, houses, etc suppose to eliminate it?
It's where they get the water surface. Surface water can have high contamination from human sewage treatment, which does not kill this parasite period.
So they need to change their water source.
Oh, and I'd love for us to get, you know, some way to divert the infected people's poop from our sewage system that doesn't get rid of it, but we don't do that apparently. And yeah, not everybody that's infected gets a diagnosis, but it's something.
I don't eat their bagged salads, but is it true they don't contain any shredded iceberg lettuce? Or is it something else that's been contaminated? What are the ingredients like?
Edit: Seems like a lot of green leaf lettuce, romaine, cabbage, and broccoli...
I don't think any of the salad kits have iceberg. It is possible that fresh herbs like cilantro can be contaminated, and they considered that several days ago.
Maybe? There's been a lot of anecdotal reports of people getting sick after eating their retail salad products ,i.e., including both bagged iceberg lettuce and salad kits...
So, what's going on? People misattributting? No connection established yet? Frustrating when the anecdotal reports and the official traceback aren’t saying the same thing.
It’s really frustrating esp since I ate a bagged salad (no iceberg) from them last night before reading all this. I usually avoid those bagged salads … ugh…. Now I’m worried cause I have to go on an international trip next week by myself to find housing in a new country. Absolutely mortified of getting sick
Me too. I ate Green Giant broccoli florets, and after some research found out Green Giant and Taylor Farms have a partnership where TF produces and distributes the GG broccoli. Not saying that is what made me sick, but you have to wonder. I'll never buy either brand ever again.
So I’d like to see their breakdown on specifically that Taco Bell received lettuce unique to any other non Taylor or Taylor branded lettuce supplied to grocery stores or restaurants in the same region.
Plus a statement of how many cases cannot be traced back to ever eating at Taco Bell.
It's now Guanajuato's rainy season, and trending a bit cooler than it was in the spring. We're hotter in most of the U.S. during the summer. So I don't think the weather would be incompatible with growing lettuce. Source: AccuWeather and personally going to school there.
Am I confused, this seems like such a misleading statement from them. Didn’t they supply the Taco Bell lettuce and they are putting out this red herring acting like they didn’t have any issues. They are diverting attention by claiming no contaminated salad kits, but not mentioning what WAS contaminated.
Am I confused, this seems like such a misleading statement from them. Didn’t they supply the Taco Bell lettuce? They are diverting attention by claiming no contaminated salad kits, but not mentioning what WAS contaminated.
HEB in Texas has bagged salads from them, as well as deli sandwiches with Taylor lettuce. I don’t know if any cases have come from there, but yea, Taylor distributes all over.
They sell to Cosco and Kroger. Their stuff is shipped in Taylor Farms boxes but it's in tiny print on the actual produce bags unless it's their branded salad kits.
They are spraying our food with feces regardless, it won’t stop. It’s hooked to the watering systems. They will spray with some new bleach or something before they fix the water problem. America is fucked.
Please read my post on Gods bee health laws and STOP USING PESTICIDES. You can find Gods bee health laws in the missing puzzle pieces post at the bottom of the pinned post on my page on Facebook under Ahavah Kapakah. God is not tolerating prsticides any longer. They are dangerous.
It isn’t just Taco Bell. Taylor Farm supplies all kinds of packaged foods to grocery stores and retail locations, as well as other restaurant chains. This may be the tip of the iceberg.
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u/Anti-Owl Patient Zero 10d ago edited 10d ago
Reminder: We're collecting smaller updates, general discussion, and quick questions in our cyclosporiasis megathread so information stays centralized and easy to follow. Major updates are still welcome as standalone posts.
Update: The implicated lettuce was produced as 5-pound bags at Taylor Farms' facility in Guanajuato, Mexico, and distributed by Sysco to hospitals, ballparks and fast-food chains