In early July, Taco Bell pulled lettuce at all locations and discontinued using Taylor Farms as a supplier. The FDA claims to have tested lettuce from Taylor Farms and initially identified them as the source of the cyclospora outbreak - however, rapidly backtracked on July 19 by claiming that the test performed was a false positive.
The FDA's own timeline is here: https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/investi...
What thickens the plot is Taylor Farms' actions with the current administration. Taylor Farms is a prominent donor to parties supporting food safety deregulation in the US. Immediately prior to the FDA claiming that the cyclospora test was a false positive, Taylor Farms held a meeting with White House officials to discuss what they claimed were "shortfalls" in the FDA's response: https://www.wired.com/story/diarrhea-outbreak-taylor-farms-m...
Taylor Farms' own safety record is rather checkered. This would make them the subject of nine recalls in fifteen years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Farms#Food_safety_and_r...
Given DOGE wiped out the teams responsible for tracking and combating these kinds of outbreaks, no confidence is warranted.
This is similar to how DOGE also wiped out the team responsible for combating screwworms, and surprise surprise, there have been screwworm outbreaks.
Or how Pete Hegseth's change to make flu vaccination optional in the armed services resulted in large outbreaks of the flu among service members.
Also, how Trump in his first term wiped out the CDC's pandemic response team because Obama had created it shortly before a once-in-a-century pandemic occurred.
The current administration has demonstrated incompetence and shortsightedness at a level never before encountered in the US, so you can expect to see even more events like this to occur.
There's also a lesson in there for the "this sucks, they're all corrupt" type nihilists. It turns out that it was possible to be a lot more corrupt, and that things could indeed become much worse.
When executive agencies have separate bodies for investigation than enforcement (e.g. the NTSB, independent of the FAA and NHTSA, and the CSB, independent of the EPA and OSHA) they tend to be very capable, with investigations that are very thorough, transparent and scientific, and result in excellent recommendations to prevent recurrences.
Executive agencies that act as regulator and investigator (the DOJ, SEC, FDA, etc…) tend to be much less capable, reacting to the first thing they come across, finding someone to publicly take them blame, then signing secretive negotiations where no one admits to any wrong doing. It is an environment that invites corruption, but it's not caused by corruption, as eliminating corruption would not create good results. A well run, and transparent investigation, where public safety is prioritized over posturing, would create much better results.
I wish, this was just a joke.
This was all expected and will continue
Most people don't report their illnesses, especially minor ones. The people that did report their illness trigger an investigation that then hunts down the people that didn't initially report their illnesses, so a month or two after the initial outbreak, you get numbers that are revised higher.
Regarding the two humps in the illness dates, that's because there's two events involved, over two different supply chains. Restaurant supply chains are faster than retail supply chains, and retail customers don't immediately consume the food they purchase, so the peak illness date from the retail supply chain is much later than the peak illness date from the restaurant supply chain.
So, the lettuce was last washed before being shredded. Then it was shredded in machines or by hand or something. It may have been misted, I guess, like you see in some grocery stores, but the point is that there was ample opportunity for contamination by equipment, vessels, or utensils, in the processing facility, during or after washing the whole lettuce.
Where in the U. S. is it legal to irrigate crops with gray water? Nowhere I’m aware of, except a few places where subsurface drip irrigation is allowed.
Additional anecdotes indicate that in any given field, the workers work, and nature calls, and workers return to work without having walked very far.
I purchased some salad kits this week, and all salad kits in the grocery store were labeled "SALINAS"
(Yes, I ate one and I feel great!)
Do yourself a favor and get a CSA, a local meat supplier, and knowledge about eating with the seasons.
The whole food supply chain is lined with fecal parasites from field to Sysco sales reps.
For example, milk is pasteurized because dairies are too lazy careless to keep literal shit out of the milk. Sure, they filter out the chunks, but a huge number of pathogens remain.
When heated those cells die, but guess what? All of their cellular machinery is still present in the final product. It can’t infect you as such, but it sure as hell isn’t anything that you should be drinking.
Look up the USDA standards for contamination. Food production involves industrial processes with necessarily loose safety margins, due to the relative scale of operations. If a small farmer caused this outbreak, they would be burnt to the ground, but anyone think this will impact the guilty beyond a minor dip in stock price?
Those corps do not care one whit about individuals any more than Apple or Facebook cares about their customers, unless you count how it affects their next quarterly statements.