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It’s been an uneasy month for grocery shopping, and even dining out. After initial reports of food-related illness spreading throughout multiple regions of the U.S. in early July, a Cleveland Clinic doctor shared that Cyclospora infection can be hard to pin down in a traceback investigation. Neha Vyas, MD, a family medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic commented, “It’s actually quite difficult to find out the root cause because unlike the bacteria that infect the gut, such as E. coli or Salmonella, this is a parasite. So, it mutates quite quickly and it is very hard to trace back to the original source.”
Reader’s Digest, our sibling site, compiled a quick list of produce to avoid in the midst of the ever-changing Cyclospora news.
Meanwhile, it was widely reported that some restaurants, such as Taco Bell, had halted serving shredded lettuce with their product. That cautionary move may have spared some cases, as on Saturday, July 18, the FDA finally published a recall report citing the company Taylor Fresh Foods, also named in the report as “Taylor Farms de Mexico” of Guanajuato, Mexico as the firm that’s initiated a voluntary U.S. recall on “all iceberg lettuce sourced from Central Mexico.”
That FDA report listed 34 lettuce products that it says were for foodservice (restaurant-type) accounts. While no consumer products were included in the report, Walmart published a link dated July 18 with the headline, “Taylor Fresh Foods Recalls Iceberg Lettuce from Central Mexico Because of Possible Health Risk.” Walmart added that product was “Sold at select Walmart Stores in the following states: AL, AR, FL, GA, IN, KS, KY, LA, MO, MS, OK, TN, TX, VA, WV.”
Sunday night, July 19, the Wall Street Journal published a story saying the FDA “walks back” its statement that a “sample of lettuce from Taylor Farms tested positive for cyclospora,” calling the sample testing a “false positive.” WSJ noted the Taylor Farms recall published by the FDA “remains in place.”
However on Monday, the Washington Post noted the FDA’s mention of “overwhelming epidemiological data” linking Taylor Farms to the outbreak. Axios summed up the latest in a Monday brief:
“The FDA turned heads with its update that a sample of Taylor Farms lettuce from Mexico that had originally tested positive for Cyclospora was re-reviewed and ‘should be considered a false positive.’ Taylor Farms said in a social media statement that the ‘FDA apologized to us’ and that the agency had ‘made a mistake.’ However, in a post, the FDA clarified that its traceback investigation of the surge in cases was still converging on shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms locations in central Mexico.”
Taylor Farms is based in California, south of San Francisco in an area sometimes called “America’s Salad Bowl” for its substantial agricultural production. On their site, the company calls itself “the leading global producer of salads and healthy fresh foods, with production facilities across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Western Europe.” It was founded in 1995 by Bruce Taylor and today reportedly employs 20,000 people.
Other recent Taylor Farms recalls include bagged salad kits sold at Walmart in summer 2025 related to salad dressing.
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