I have spent the last month counting sick people. The fifty state health departments now report 26,755 cases of cyclosporiasis this season, against 249 nationally at this point last year, and I have written about almost nothing else since the middle of July. Today I want to write about something that worked, because I think
FDA published its final Guide to Minimize Biological Hazards in Ready-to-Eat Fresh-Cut Produce on August 11, a day ahead of its Federal Register date, and I have Marion Nestle to thank for the heads up[1]. Eighty pages, eight years from draft to final, nonbinding, and aimed only at registered processors — not
In twenty-four days, the same company has turned up at the center of two separate federal foodborne illness investigations. One is the largest Cyclospora outbreak this country has ever recorded. The other is a Salmonella Javiana outbreak that has sickened 345 people in 27 states. That does not happen to most produce companies in a
From the Michigan Department of Health:
Two deaths have been identified as part of the cyclosporiasis outbreak affecting Michigan. According to medical records, both individuals had significant underlying health conditions that may have been impacted by cyclosporiasis and dehydration. The two Michigan cases became ill prior to the voluntary recall of iceberg lettuce announced
Saturday, August 1, 2026
Last Saturday this column was called The Agencies Caught Up to the Reporters — and the Cyclospora Outbreak Got Six Weeks Shorter. This week the counting argument gave way to a different one. Yum Brands told its shareholders what the outbreak has done to Taco Bell. A grocer in Connecticut
The map below crosses two questions against each other for all fifty states. Did the state receive iceberg lettuce that Taylor Farms de Mexico recalled on July 17? And does the state publish a 2026 Cyclospora case count of its own? Those two questions produce four groups, and the four groups do not line up
CDC currently reports 4,173 laboratory-confirmed, domestically acquired Cyclospora cases since May 1.[1] The federal government’s own published model for foodborne illness burden — Scallan and colleagues, 2011, still the only Cyclospora-specific burden estimate ever published in this country that I could find — carries a credible interval whose upper bound implies that roughly
Every time Taylor Farms turns up at the center of an outbreak, the company says the same thing — this is an isolated event, our branded products are not involved, we acted quickly. So let us put the record in one place. What follows is every Taylor Farms outbreak I can verify from public sources
Saturday, July 11, 2026
Four outbreaks, no confirmed source, and a national surveillance system now watching a fraction of what it did a year ago. That was the food safety week in America. A parasite most people can’t pronounce has sickened well past a thousand, a Tampa buffet was growing Listeria on its own counters
Go ahead and Google “Florida Man.” You’ll get a thousand headlines about the world’s worst superhero — a meme built on the idea that the Sunshine State is uniquely weird. What Florida is, is uniquely visible. The Miami New Times figured this out years ago: Florida’s open-government laws make arrest records easier to get
