Breed Midwest lovers, enjoy! It seems that parents can stop worrying about serving their kids fruit, Redditors can stop trying to diagnose their own illnesses, and I can stop. cook my salads. The mystery of what food caused an outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a parasitic disease that causes diarrhea, in several western states appears to have been solved: It was served with shredded lettuce at Taco Bell, federal health agencies announced yesterday.
As far as food explosions go, this result is as good as it gets. Yes, thousands of people got sick, but no one died. And the fact that the authorities not only found the vegetable in question, but also the source – the seller in Mexico – means that now they can get to the bottom of what went wrong, and maybe Americans can enjoy the spoils of summer crops with less fear. However, the nation’s collective confusion should serve as a wake-up call to the food industry and regulators. Behind the jokes about “diarrhea lettuce” and eating processed foods was a real fear that the system was failing to keep Americans safe.
The cyclosporiasis outbreak seemed to confirm Americans’ doubts about our food safety system and the people who manage it. Confidence in the safety of the US food supply is at its lowest in at least 13 years, according to recent survey data from the International Food Information Council, an industry-funded group; Most respondents said they believe that companies put profit over safety and that regulations are not strict enough. Surveys have found that trust in the CDC and FDA is also in the dumps, reflecting Americans’ long-standing issues of trust in corporations, as well as some reaction among Democrats to the Trump administration’s changes to corporations.
The current cyclosporiasis outbreak was mishandled by industry and regulators alike. Many Americans suspected that Taco Bell was the culprit after photos surfaced last week of signs posted outside Taco Bell branches announcing that they were not offering certain toppings. But the company’s PR team failed to provide a clear explanation of what was going on and how widespread the problem might have been. Yesterday, Taco Bell posted on its website that it was acting “out of an abundance of caution” by removing produce from some stores but did not yet explain what had gone wrong. When I reached out today to ask if Taco Bell was certain the issue was confined to the Midwest, the company referred me to a statement that did not address the question, but confirmed that it “has completed the removal of the affected Taylor Farms lettuce from our restaurants.”
Meanwhile, as of late last week, while Michigan had reported more than 1,500 tests for the bug, the CDC website still said that fewer than 200 cases had been identified nationwide. The delay may have been due to CDC officials reviewing preliminary data from states in an attempt to establish a true national count of confirmed cases of cyclosporiasis, but from the outside, it appeared as if the agency did not know what was going on.
Federal officials did not call a press conference until earlier this week. By then, Michigan had announced that 3,309 people had become ill and publicly identified lettuce as a possible cause of the outbreak, and lettuce-free Taco Bells had already spread. When NBC News asked if officials were looking at Taco Bell as a culprit, the acting head of the FDA’s food service center, Donald Prater, fumed: “FDA is certainly continuing its investigation of the surveillance of many products, including areas that are reported by patients before illness.” The first confirmation that Taco Bell was under investigation did not come from the company or the CDC, but from anonymous sources that spoke to. Washington Post.
The advice Americans received about how to stay safe has also been confusing. Prater said during a press conference that washing the produce “was very helpful in reducing the risk of this parasite.” But food safety experts told me they don’t know how much washing helps. Yesterday’s CDC advisory offers more relevant advice: “Do not eat shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia.” But it didn’t say what might have caused states like New York and North Carolina to report spikes in cyclosporiasis cases as well, or what, if anything, residents should do to stay safe.
Additionally, the media reports that the facility in Mexico is associated with Taylor Farms, a large operation that supplies lettuce to restaurants and grocery stores across the country. The CDC, which did not name Taylor Farms in its announcement, has not been contacted about why it believes the only affected product is the shredded iceberg lettuce served at select Taco Bell locations. Taco Bell’s brief notice posted on its website makes the issue seem even bigger. The company wrote that it encourages “all concerned restaurants, retailers, and food service operators” to take the same precautionary measures. The CDC website also states that the FDA is “working directly with the supplier to determine if the contaminated iceberg lettuce went elsewhere.”
In a statement, Taylor Farms’ parent company, Taylor Fresh Foods, told me that although the FDA’s investigation identified “one independent farm,” the company has indefinitely removed all iceberg lettuce sourced from Central Mexico. The company also said that the affected fields “represent less than 1% of the U.S. iceberg lettuce supply,” and “no other Taylor Fresh Foods products nationwide are affected.” The company did not respond to my follow-up questions about whether the farm had provided iceberg lettuce to any entity other than the Taco Bell locations identified in the survey.
Maybe iceberg lettuce from a farm in Mexico just went to Taco Bell in the Midwest. It is possible, too, that the spikes seen outside this hub are not a sign of a larger explosion. After all, cases of cyclosporiasis usually increase in the summer, and a lot of information surrounding the parasite can cause people who would normally tolerate the disease at home to be tested. But Americans won’t know that unless the CDC says something. When I asked today what was causing the cyclosporiasis cases outside the Midwest, and why the CDC was so confident that other Taylor Farms products were not affected, an agency spokeswoman dismissed my questions and referred me to previous government information.
