On October 2, FDA closed its investigation into the largest Cyclospora outbreak in American history: 12,883 confirmed illnesses, 570 hospitalizations and two deaths in 21 states, linked to shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico. Inspectors found the parasite in a wastewater tank at the processing plant and in a drainage ditch at a
On Friday, Christina Jewett, Alice Callahan and Caroline Hopkins Legaspi of the New York Times reported FDA’s finding in the terms it deserved. Inspectors found Cyclospora in water from a tank of outgoing wastewater at the Taylor Farms de Mexico plant that chopped the lettuce, and in sediment from a drainage ditch at an iceberg
Three questions keep arriving in my inbox: what did industry say, did Congress ever get an answer, and what are the final numbers. Here are the short answers, then the record behind each. Taylor Farms gave a reporter a statement and changed nothing on its own website. The largest produce association answered FDA’s letter to
I am somewhere over Greenland on my way home.
On Friday, Dr. Donna Garren, who directs the Office of Produce Safety at FDA, sent her stakeholder list a short email with four FDA links on this summer’s Cyclospora outbreaks, and asked readers to look at one in particular: a list of ten things FDA commits
The multistate Cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico closed on September 11, 2026 with 12,883 illnesses, 570 hospitalizations and 2 deaths in 21 states. Investigators did not lose the supply chain. They followed it to the supplier within a day and lost it at the last link, the farm
Someone asked me today what is going on with Cyclospora. Here is where things are as of a few moments ago.
CDC updated its Cyclospora case-data page on September 15, 2026, and said it was the last weekly one. It now reports 19,883 laboratory-confirmed cases of cyclosporiasis acquired in this country since May 1, 1,064
On September 14, Representative Debbie Dingell and nine House colleagues wrote to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins asking why USDA shelved two of its three Cyclospora research projects during the largest foodborne illness outbreak the country has recorded. It is the fourteenth congressional letter on the 2026 outbreak, the first addressed to USDA, and the first
Through the summer, one explanation competed with the lettuce for the largest Cyclospora outbreak in American history: that the parasite came out of American water — municipal sewage overflows around Detroit and Toledo, private wells, and Lake Erie. Below is every public instance of that argument I can document, what each one claimed, what each
On September 11, 2026, CDC declared the multistate outbreak of Cyclospora infections linked to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico over. The final federal count is 12,883 laboratory-confirmed illnesses across twenty-one states, 570 hospitalizations, two deaths in Michigan, and a last illness onset of August 17. Virginia was added as the twenty-first state on
Cyclosporiasis is the intestinal illness caused by Cyclospora cayetanensis, a parasite that reaches produce when human waste reaches a field or the water running through it. This summer it caused the largest outbreak of its kind in American history. Depending on which page you open, this summer either sickened 12,883 people, 19,595, or 33,548.
