BS Summary: This video contains 33 faulty reasoning types, including Confirmation Bias, Anecdotal, and Halo Effect, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 39.6% saturation with 332 hits. Analysis detected 2,558 faulty-reasoning hits from 838 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 57.4% and a BS Rank of 61% (7,701 of 19,667 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 60.80% of the video peer group.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is defending his administration's handling of the Cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands of people across the country.
>> We have done extensive forensics, epidemiological forensics, and we've identified the um the source of the outbreak.
We and the companies that have been involved have implemented a recall.
>> His remarks come as the FDA says it still believes the source of the parasitic illness is lettuce from commercial grower Taylor Farms, even after a sample from the company turned out to be a false positive.
Taylor Farms is one of the nation's key suppliers of lettuce and other produce to some of the nation's biggest retailers.
That includes Walmart and Whole Foods, along with food chains like Taco Bell and
McDonald's. Taco Bell has seen a 19% drop in foot traffic as a result of this outbreak.
Let's bring in CBS News correspondent Carter Evans.
So, we already know Taco Bell says that they've pulled that kind of lettuce, but help us understand.
The FDA says there was this false positive, but there is still data that overwhelmingly supports Taylor Farms.
Farms voluntary recall. How does that make sense?
>> So, what they're talking about is the trace back investigation. And And we're talking about thousands of people who became sick with this Cyclosporiasis outbreak here. What's been happening is health officials from state and local and federal governments have been interviewing these people one by one, walking them back through what they ate over the last week. And they say or the last weeks. And they're saying that all of this information that they're getting, these signals they call them, are converging back on Taylor Farms.
And when they looked at Taylor Farms and where those suppliers came from, where those people say they ate, where they say they bought their bagged salad, they're saying that it comes from these farms in Central Mexico. And that is the data that the FDA is relying on right now.
Now. Now, in terms of the false positive, you know, I've talked with some experts in this case and they say it is a really complicated test. It is a DNA test and in order to get it to show anything, you have to amplify the particles of DNA that are found. I mean, this is above my head, but my understanding is is that if you amplify that too much, you can get a false positive.
And when you think about it, this infected material or or or contaminated material could have happened weeks or maybe even months ago in a crop that has now been plowed under for another crop. So, it might not test positive at the same farm and that is why officials rely on these traceback tests.
>> Wow, and you spoke with the CEO of Sweet Greens.
The company was not impacted, but of course they have to respond. They don't even have iceberg lettuce at their locations, but of course people don't necessarily know the granularity of what kind of lettuce.
They just hear lettuce. So, how does a company like that respond?
>> Uh they're responding to my being open and honest with their customers.
Number one, saying they don't get any lettuce from Mexico.
And as you said, they don't have any iceberg lettuce on the menu at all.
They also took us back inside this restaurant here today and as they do in all of their restaurants, they wash their lettuce by hand here twice and they use a disinfectant with it, so it is very clean.
And this is not something they just started doing. This is something they've done for a long period of time.
They also say that they've created their own produce supply chain right down to the very farm and they actually write on a board in their stores where each piece of produce came from, which particular farm.
And they said if there ever is a problem, they can instantly trace it back to a particular farm down to the very lot number within a matter of moments, so
they could pull anything out of the stores if necessary. but but as you said, they are not impacted at all by this in terms of having any of the contaminated lettuce. They are impacted by the fallout, and they couldn't tell me how much of a financial impact it's had on the business because this is a publicly traded company.
They have an earnings call coming up in a couple of weeks, so they would not talk about the impact, but you can imagine that there has been a significant impact.
A lot of people are avoiding lettuce altogether right now.
>> Certainly, and this you know, for the first time for a lot of us, you're wondering where does my food come from?
Something we don't always think about.
Carter Evans, thank you so much.
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