Lettuce pray: We’ve found the source of the diarrhea parasite.
On Thursday, the US Food and Drug Administration linked shredded iceberg lettuce supplied to Taco Bell restaurants in five states to an ongoing cyclosporiasis outbreak.
Public health officials are warning customers not to eat shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia.
Taylor Farms supplied the lettuce to Taco Bell, according to a person familiar with the matter. The five-state outbreak includes 1,644 confirmed cases, 94 hospitalizations, and no reported deaths. However, the outbreak likely goes beyond just Taco Bell’s shredded lettuce supply.
So ends one chapter of the nightmare that’s kept some Americans glued to their toilets and rethinking their lunch options.
Identifying patient zero is only half the battle. Taylor Farms sells bagged salads at places like Walmart, Target, and Costco. In addition to Taco Bell, the company supplies chain restaurants like Chipotle and McDonald’s.
Identifying the source of cyclospora won’t eliminate all the problems.
Outbreaks like this tend to have a long tail. Costco recalled frozen fruit due to Hepatitis A risks back in 2023. My wife would still have my head if I tried bringing home a bag these days.
Companies know how hard those stigmas can be to shake. More than two years after Chipotle’s 2015 E. coli outbreak, the chain struggled to get customers to return. Chipotle eventually paid a $25 million fine and agreed to a new food safety plan.
A restaurant chain can’t easily change suppliers. But for an industry that’s simultaneously fighting rising prices while trying to appeal to value-seeking customers, the margin for error is small.
Of course, some places could opt out of leafy greens entirely as they rethink their menus. Restaurants are touting protein servings in entrées (and sometimes even putting it in their coffee).
What better way to lean into proteinmaxxing than to chop salads that could be a PR liability?
But the slop bowl is resilient, if nothing else. BI’s Juliana Kaplan polled some New Yorkers on Thursday about whether they were changing their lunch habits. Some were unaware of the entire saga — we’ll need to get them signed up for BI Today — while others were willing to risk it.
“But for office lunch … I’m going a little bit more rogue here,” Jonas Kell, who was eating a fast-casual Mediterranean salad, told Juliana.
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