CBS News97%
What to know about the cyclosporiasis outbreak as Taylor Farms pulls iceberg lettuce 88%
7/17/2026, 10:53:31 PM
BS Summary: This video contains 32 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Overconfidence Bias, and Negativity Bias, with Burden of Proof as the most egregious example at 34.3% saturation with 203 hits. Analysis detected 2,068 faulty-reasoning hits from 591 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 82% and a BS Rank of 88% (2,263 of 18,785 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 88.00% of the video peer group.
Produce supplier is voluntarily recalling iceberg lettuce that sickened thousands of people across the country.
Source tells CBS News the lettuce in question came from Mexico and supplied by the agricultural giant known as Taylor Farms.
Based in Selenus, California, the company supplies produce to many fast food restaurants and sells packaged produce to stores like Walmart and Target.
Officials say packaged products are not affected.
and CBS News medical correspondent Selene Gounder has been following the story for us.
She's also editor at large for public health at KFF News.
Doctor, what did we learn today?
>> So, the CDC has confirmed that shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell in five different states, so Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia, is behind the cycllospora outbreak.
The FDA has traced it to the single supplier, Taylor Farms in California, and it's focused on a Taylor Farms farm in Mexico that grew the lettuce as well as a plant nearby that shredded it.
And as you noted, Taylor Farms is voluntarily pulling this product.
>> So, lettuce safe to eat now? Yes or no?
Well, the investigation remains active and additional states, restaurants, retailers may be identified, uh, even products may be identified as more information becomes available.
So, uh, I wouldn't say we're quote out of the woods yet. Um, more remains to be seen,
but big picture, you know, Taylor Farms is a massive distributor. Uh, they work through different food distributors who in turn sell the produce to restaurants and grocery stores.
It's very difficult to trace some of that. They don't publicly share information about their sales to distributors, retailers, and
restaurants. So, it may it's not transparent to the public um exactly where their products show up.
>> Has Taylor Farms had issues like this before?
>> More than once, uh the supplier was tied to a cycllospora outbreak in 2013 as well as an E.coli outbreak uh involving McDonald's onions in 2024.
Some folks may remember that uh last year lawsuits identified it as the source of a deadly Roma uh lettuce ecoli outbreak that the FDA investigated but didn't disclose.
Taylor Farms denies that one.
>> So what should we think about Dr. Gounder the FDA and CDC in this process?
>> Yeah, that's a really important point.
The real fix here is better rules and testing which is on the FDA and the CDC.
So this paras parasite spreads uh when human waste gets into the water used to irrigate crops for example and farm workers whether they're in the US or abroad need proper restroom and sanitation facilities when on the job so these contamination events don't occur.
There's also a bill moving through Congress right now that decides much of um how to fund food food safety programs in the United States.
The House just gave uh FDA's food safety budget a small bump, but that barely restores the money and staff that got cut with the Doge cuts last year.
>> Very quickly, Dr. Gounder. So, if I wash my lettuce, I'm okay. True or false?
>> False. False. water. Uh even if you're using a high pressure rinsing your fruits and vegetables, uh that is not enough.
Uh the things that are really foolproof are either cooking or peeling the fruits and vegetables.
And unfortunately, you can't really do either with lettuce.
>> Dr. Selene Gounder, great stuff as always. Thank you for your time.
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