As Parasite Spawned Chaos, Taylor Farms Slow-Walked Its Response

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A Taylor Farms representative said last week that it didn’t request to be omitted from public statements.

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A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described Taylor Farms as defensive through the process and stressed that Trump himself had not been in touch with the company.

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By Friday afternoon, following numerous news articles linking the company to the outbreak, Taylor Farms issued a statement saying that based on information provided by the FDA, the company was “voluntarily removing all iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico.”

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It emphasized that “no Taylor Farms branded salads or kits are associated with this outbreak” and that none of the kits contained iceberg lettuce. FDA tracing, Taylor Farms said, indicated a specific independent farm in Mexico was responsible.

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But the statement only seemed to prompt additional questions. It did not explicitly concede the company’s lettuce had been tainted or call it an official recall, or explain whether non-branded kits were vulnerable and what, if any, products consumers should discard.

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The FDA subsequently released its own notice referring to a Taylor Farms “recall.” Hours later, the company issued a follow-up statement with an explicit recall of all iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico that included products distributed across 27 states under eight different brands.

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“The recall notice that came out at the end of that process is inadequate,” Mayne said.

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And while Taylor Farms initially left the impression its bagged lettuce sold in retail stores would not be included in the recall, the subsequent announcement indicated it wanted some retail products pulled off shelves.

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Food Safety

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On Saturday, Walmart Inc. told Bloomberg News it had removed four bagged salads after receiving a notice from Taylor Farms. Other companies including food service provider Sysco Corp. were named on the recall notice in the confusing list of acronyms.

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“At the direction of Taylor Farms, the only product subject to recall are Taylor Farms processed iceberg lettuce products from Mexico, which remain unavailable for sale or distribution,” Sysco said in a statement, adding that it informed customers of the recall.

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The initial vagueness in Taylor Farms’ communications seemed to underscore the extent to which a recall posed a risk to a company that has marketed itself as oriented around food safety.

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Bruce Taylor helped launch the Center for Produce Safety and a statewide marketing agreement to standardize industry safety practices, and the company sells a proprietary anti-contamination system called SmartWash.

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Taylor Farms already recalled some yellow onion batches produced in a Colorado facility in response to a 2024 deadly outbreak of E. coli linked to some McDonald’s Corp. burgers that sickened more than 100 people across 14 states.

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Whatever doubt remained appeared to evaporate by Saturday. A sample of shredded iceberg lettuce collected by the FDA during targeted surveillance of Mexican produce imported from a Taylor Farms facility tested positive. The impacted lettuce wasn’t involved in the initial recall, suggesting Taylor Farms would likely need to expand the removal efforts.

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But on Sunday, federal scientists conceded it had been a false positive. Food safety experts say that isn’t surprising — cyclospora is notoriously difficult to detect and false positives occur regularly. The company seized on the admission, releasing a new statement claiming the “FDA apologized to us.”