Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak triples in size | Hacker News Reader

Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak triples in size

efoodalert.com

38 pointsspeckx37 comments

This is nearly a month now and the problem continuing to worsen does not inspire confidence that the current administration's FDA is doing its job properly or has the problem under control.

In early July, Taco Bell pulled lettuce at all locations and discontinued using Taylor Farms as a supplier. The FDA claims to have tested lettuce from Taylor Farms and initially identified them as the source of the cyclospora outbreak - however, rapidly backtracked on July 19 by claiming that the test performed was a false positive.

The FDA's own timeline is here: https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/investi...

What thickens the plot is Taylor Farms' actions with the current administration. Taylor Farms is a prominent donor to parties supporting food safety deregulation in the US. Immediately prior to the FDA claiming that the cyclospora test was a false positive, Taylor Farms held a meeting with White House officials to discuss what they claimed were "shortfalls" in the FDA's response: https://www.wired.com/story/diarrhea-outbreak-taylor-farms-m...

Taylor Farms' own safety record is rather checkered. This would make them the subject of nine recalls in fifteen years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Farms#Food_safety_and_r...

> does not inspire confidence that the current administration's FDA is doing its job properly or has the problem under control.

Given DOGE wiped out the teams responsible for tracking and combating these kinds of outbreaks, no confidence is warranted.

This is similar to how DOGE also wiped out the team responsible for combating screwworms, and surprise surprise, there have been screwworm outbreaks.

Or how Pete Hegseth's change to make flu vaccination optional in the armed services resulted in large outbreaks of the flu among service members.

Also, how Trump in his first term wiped out the CDC's pandemic response team because Obama had created it shortly before a once-in-a-century pandemic occurred.

The current administration has demonstrated incompetence and shortsightedness at a level never before encountered in the US, so you can expect to see even more events like this to occur.

May the owners and management of Taylor Farms have frequent, watery, and explosive diarrhea.

same with Taco Bell executives - but customers should only be getting the regular, normal amount of explosive diarrhea from their food.

I don't think Taco Bell are the villains of this story. They got right on tracing the problem down and were open about it, from what I understand. Taylor Farms... not so much.

It doesn't help that they were getting mixed signals from the FDA. The further up you go, the worse it gets.

Yeah, corruption hurts all of us.

There's also a lesson in there for the "this sucks, they're all corrupt" type nihilists. It turns out that it was possible to be a lot more corrupt, and that things could indeed become much worse.

I think Hanlon's razor applies here.

When executive agencies have separate bodies for investigation than enforcement (e.g. the NTSB, independent of the FAA and NHTSA, and the CSB, independent of the EPA and OSHA) they tend to be very capable, with investigations that are very thorough, transparent and scientific, and result in excellent recommendations to prevent recurrences.

Executive agencies that act as regulator and investigator (the DOJ, SEC, FDA, etc…) tend to be much less capable, reacting to the first thing they come across, finding someone to publicly take them blame, then signing secretive negotiations where no one admits to any wrong doing. It is an environment that invites corruption, but it's not caused by corruption, as eliminating corruption would not create good results. A well run, and transparent investigation, where public safety is prioritized over posturing, would create much better results.

Cutting staff responsible for monitoring outbreaks like this one appears to have been a mistake.

It depends what you are optimizing for.

I always forget about the explosive diarrhea lobby.

ah, the toilet paper and plumbing lobbies. I knew it!

"See the <government department> didn't even stop this thing why do we have a government at all!!"

There was a time where HN would gleefully claim that if something like this ever happened, the free market would naturally correct it.

> I always forget about the explosive diarrhea lobby.

I wish, this was just a joke.

It's only a joke if farts are involved.

I know that’s a joke. But there are a lot of voters (and politicians) who think things like federal food standards and inspections are an unwarranted intrusion and waste of tax money.

An excellent illustration of Chesterton's Fence

Taylor Farms uses prison labor too.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/fact-check-tayl...

How is this still not contained? Jeez.

So, tfa does not really cover this in great depth but it looks like it is mostly over in terms of new cases, at least just looking at the graph. Maybe though it is just a time delay between new cases and reporting.

Lettuce has a shelf-life of ~4 weeks from harvest, the parasite can incubate for ~2 weeks from consumption, and it may take a week or two for the infected person to see a doctor, get positive test results, and have those results reported to the tracking bodies. That means tracking could easily lag distribution of the bad goods by 2 months.

Operating company that contributes heavily to the Republican administration. Owner of said company went to the White House to have said administration walk back the findings that they are the source of explosive diarrhea. Administration firing a chunk of the staff responsible for tracking and recalling products that cause explosive diarrhea. Administration having folks who don't understand science or health and don't believe in facts in charge of science and health.

This was all expected and will continue

Why is this flagged?

any reason why a foodborne illness would have two "waves" like this? Different batches?

There's two things going on here.

Most people don't report their illnesses, especially minor ones. The people that did report their illness trigger an investigation that then hunts down the people that didn't initially report their illnesses, so a month or two after the initial outbreak, you get numbers that are revised higher.

Regarding the two humps in the illness dates, that's because there's two events involved, over two different supply chains. Restaurant supply chains are faster than retail supply chains, and retail customers don't immediately consume the food they purchase, so the peak illness date from the retail supply chain is much later than the peak illness date from the restaurant supply chain.

I don't understand the mechanics of how an outbreak like this even happens. It spreads by contact with contaminated feces. So if a few cases happen at a restaurant that's nasty and easy to understand. But how do you get tens of thousands of cases on a national level? Were they cleaning the produce before shipping it off with poop contaminated water or what?

It has long been asserted that processed produce is the riskiest way to purchase it. In this particular case, Taco Bell was receiving lettuce that was pre-shredded at a facility. When a consumer or food service kitchen receives pre-processed produce, it's not recommended to wash it again, for reasons.

So, the lettuce was last washed before being shredded. Then it was shredded in machines or by hand or something. It may have been misted, I guess, like you see in some grocery stores, but the point is that there was ample opportunity for contamination by equipment, vessels, or utensils, in the processing facility, during or after washing the whole lettuce.

Watering fields with grey water and whoopsie

Gray water doesn’t have poop in it, and I’d be shocked if it were legal to dump black water (raw sewage) on fields.

The whoopsie is implying that what was on paper and legal, grey water being used, is not what actually occurred. Of course one will ask for proof of such mistakes or corruption and to which all I can give are thousands of people infected with parasites.

The whoopsie is implying that what was on paper and legal…

Where in the U. S. is it legal to irrigate crops with gray water? Nowhere I’m aware of, except a few places where subsurface drip irrigation is allowed.

I don't know about legality, but the current rumors say that this produce originated in the United States of Mexico, where Taylor Farms has a large presence.

Additional anecdotes indicate that in any given field, the workers work, and nature calls, and workers return to work without having walked very far.

I purchased some salad kits this week, and all salad kits in the grocery store were labeled "SALINAS"

(Yes, I ate one and I feel great!)

Are you suggesting USA only use potable water for irrigation? Maybe I use the wrong word but most water used is ground or surface water with whatever in it is in it,even if downstream from farms with runoff?

If you are eating the garbage they sell at supermarkets/chain restaurants then you are not immune to any of this.

Do yourself a favor and get a CSA, a local meat supplier, and knowledge about eating with the seasons.

The whole food supply chain is lined with fecal parasites from field to Sysco sales reps.

Small farmer here: it’s true. Supermarket food is horrible in terms of nutrition and taste, but it’s laden with literal shit too.

For example, milk is pasteurized because dairies are too lazy careless to keep literal shit out of the milk. Sure, they filter out the chunks, but a huge number of pathogens remain.

When heated those cells die, but guess what? All of their cellular machinery is still present in the final product. It can’t infect you as such, but it sure as hell isn’t anything that you should be drinking.

Look up the USDA standards for contamination. Food production involves industrial processes with necessarily loose safety margins, due to the relative scale of operations. If a small farmer caused this outbreak, they would be burnt to the ground, but anyone think this will impact the guilty beyond a minor dip in stock price?

Those corps do not care one whit about individuals any more than Apple or Facebook cares about their customers, unless you count how it affects their next quarterly statements.

Is it any better in Canada

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