Taylor Farms posted on X that the FDA had apologized. Agency lab testing linked its product to the worst U.S. cyclosporiasis outbreak in decades, but the results were a false positive. Not only that, but the government still has no lab results linking the company’s lettuce to the outbreak.
The statement, released Sunday, is a high-profile statement designed to give the impression that regulators, which have previously said there is substantial evidence linking Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce to a public health crisis, made significant scientific errors.
By July 21, X post was deleted.
This follows a rebuke from the FDA, which denied it had ever apologized to the company. The agency defended its work and explained that the erroneous lab results only expanded the existing recall — it did not clear Taylor Farms of responsibility. The FDA is also trying to clarify other claims made by Taylor Farms that experts say are misleading.
Gastrointestinal disease caused by parasites can cause severe diarrhea. it is Disgusting Thousands of people, more than 300 people hospitalized.
A U.S. official said the company effectively delayed the recall as the number of cases surged, ultimately confusing customers. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations. Taylor Farms did this by privately challenging the science and publicly obfuscating it, the official said.
A Taylor Farms representative said last week that the company met with FDA and White House officials “to discuss the best ways to ensure public health.” The company declined to comment further on the matter.
“A laboratory test produced a false positive result for a batch of Taylor Farms lettuce that was outside the scope of the current recall, and the FDA notified the company immediately upon receipt of the results,” Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in a statement, adding that the corrected results did not change the agency’s decision.
“The communications from Taylor Farms were confusing,” said Susan Mayne, then-former director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “The recall notice is probably the most obtuse recall notice I can remember seeing.”
When the FDA first linked Taylor Farms’ operations in central Mexico to a spate of cyclosporiasis cases in Michigan and neighboring states, the agricultural conglomerate missed a deadline set by regulators to take action. At some point, Taylor Farms spoke directly to the White House, and the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were later asked to defend their evidence. The back-and-forth ended up keeping the public in the dark for another 60 hours, U.S. health officials said.
The company also issued an initial statement that did not explicitly announce a recall of potentially contaminated romaine lettuce, but later provided more details in a review. Taylor Farms has now taken action to remove social media posts that left some consumers confused about whether their lettuce was actually linked to the outbreak.
Founded in 1995 in the Salinas Valley, California, Taylor Farms (the trading name of Taylor Fresh Foods, Inc.) employs 20,000 people and sells products in major supermarkets throughout the United States and supplies restaurants and other food service providers. The company calls itself a “leading global producer of salads and healthy fresh foods” on its website and has production facilities in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Last Wednesday, representatives from the CDC and Food and Drug Administration contacted the company to discuss the outbreak. Officials surveyed hundreds of people with cyclosporiasis in the Midwest and found a common theme — many of the patients now suffering from stomach cramps had eaten at Taco Bell restaurants.
Federal officials outlined to Taylor Farms representatives that they believed the culprit was iceberg lettuce the company supplied to Taco Bell locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia; the sheer number of patients who reported dining at the Mexican-style fast-food chain convinced them it was no coincidence.
Not only would a recall be costly, it would indelibly associate Taylor Farms with the term “explosive diarrhea” in the minds of American consumers.
missed deadline
U.S. health officials said the government gave Taylor Farms a deadline to initiate a voluntary recall by noon the next day. The parasite has been found in 34 states and health authorities are urgently investigating potential sources.
Then the White House got involved. The California-based food processor has been linked to President Donald Trump.
Taylor Farms donated $1 million last year to political action committees supporting the president. Days earlier, CEO Bruce Taylor joined Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and hundreds of agriculture executives, members of Congress and federal staff at an event in Mount Vernon celebrating 250 years of American agriculture.
The initial deadline for Taylor Farms to initiate a voluntary recall or take product action — Thursday at noon — came and went.
Still, health agency officials were coordinating an announcement they planned to release later in the day.
Two White House officials held a conference call with the FDA and CDC, according to people familiar with the matter. White House aides are asking government health officials to scrutinize specific evidence linking the outbreak to lettuce and want to review drafts of upcoming press releases.
Within hours, the White House agreed that the patient survey painted a clear picture, people familiar with the matter said. In an internal call, White House aides approved the public health agency’s statement for public release, though they still only pointed to Taco Bell as being linked to the outbreak without specifically naming Taylor Farms.
Taco Bell took the lead, releasing statement. While not explicitly naming Taylor Farms, it said it believes “public health is a shared responsibility of the restaurant, its suppliers and authorities, and we are proud to consistently act quickly and proactively to protect our guests.”
The agency ultimately issued an update on the outbreak just after 10 p.m. New York time, several hours later than originally planned, and did not directly name Taylor Farms or say whether the company would recall the product.
A representative for Taylor Farms said last week that the company had not requested that the information be removed from public statements.
A White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Taylor Farms had been on the defensive throughout the process and stressed that Trump himself had not been in touch with the company.
By Friday afternoon, Taylor Farms released a statement following a flurry of news reports linking the company to the outbreak statement It said that based on information provided by the FDA, the company “voluntarily removed all iceberg lettuce from central Mexico.”
It emphasized that “no Taylor Farms brand salads or kits have been linked to this outbreak” and that all kits did not contain iceberg lettuce. Taylor Farms said FDA tracking showed a specific independent farm in Mexico was responsible.
But the announcement only seemed to raise more questions. It did not explicitly acknowledge that the company’s lettuce had been contaminated or call it a formal recall, nor did it explain whether off-brand kits were vulnerable or which products, if any, consumers should discard.
The FDA later issued its own notice referring to the Taylor Farms “recall.” Hours later, the company issued a follow-up statement explicitly recalling all iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico, including products distributed in 27 states under eight different brands.
“A recall notice issued at the end of the process is not sufficient,” Mayne said.
Although Taylor Farms initially left the impression that its bagged lettuce sold in retail stores would not be included in the recall, subsequent announcements indicated that it wanted to remove some retail products from shelves.
food safety
On Saturday, Walmart Inc. told Bloomberg News it had Deleted After receiving the notice from Taylor Farms, I bought four bags of salad. Other companies, including food service provider Sysco Corp., also appear in the recall notice’s confusing list of acronyms.
“At the direction of Taylor Farms, the only products subject to recall are iceberg lettuce products from Mexico processed by Taylor Farms, which remain unavailable for sale or distribution,” Sysco said in a statement, adding that it had notified customers of the recall.
The ambiguity in Taylor Farms’ initial communication seemed to underscore the extent of the risk the recall posed to a company that describes itself as food safety-oriented.
Bruce Taylor helped found the Center for Produce Safety and a statewide marketing agreement to standardize industry safety practices, and the company also sells a proprietary anti-contamination system called SmartWash.
Taylor Farms has recalled some lots of yellow onions produced at a Colorado plant in response to a deadly E. coli outbreak in 2024 linked Some McDonald’s burgers have sickened more than 100 people in 14 states.
By Saturday, any doubts seemed to have dissipated. A sample of chopped iceberg lettuce collected by the FDA during targeted surveillance of Mexican produce imported from the Taylor Farms facility tested positive. The affected lettuce was not part of the original recall, suggesting Taylor Farms may need to expand its removal efforts.
But on Sunday, federal scientists acknowledged it was a false alarm. Food safety experts say this is not surprising — Cyclospora is notoriously difficult to detect, and false positives occur frequently. The company seized on the admission and issued a new statement claiming that “the FDA apologizes to us.”
“We were informed that the FDA made an error and this was a false positive,” the company said. “To be clear, at this time, the FDA has not identified any products that have tested positive for Cyclospora.”
The FDA took action on Monday. social mediadisputed the idea that false positives absolve Taylor Farms of liability. An FDA official also insisted to reporters that the agency had not provided a formal apology to the company.
The agency said there is “overwhelming epidemiological data supporting the current voluntary recall of Taylor Farms.” Traceability investigations and outbreak data “continue to focus on chopped iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms in central Mexico.”
“In my tenure at the FDA, I have never seen so much misinformation about an outbreak and widespread confusion among consumers,” Mayne said.
Part of the confusion was due to FDA communications over the weekend, she said, “but Taylor Farms’ communication really added to the confusion by sending a very different message than what the FDA originally intended to send.”
photo: Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
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