FDA report reveals where Taylor Farms sent its lettuce–and it raises questions | Hacker News Reader

FDA report reveals where Taylor Farms sent its lettuce–and it raises questions

arstechnica.com

28 pointstnash8 comments

Does this actually raise questions? I was under the impression that Taco Bell wasn't uniquely responsible for putting contaminated lettuce in the mouths of innocents, they were just more transparent about their supply chain than anyone else was.

But the actual numbers don't surprise me: the majority of bad lettuce went to Wal-Mart, and a significant chunk went to restaurant suppliers like Sysco. People obviously shop at Wal-Mart (and I think many small restaurants shop at Sam's Club, same as Costco), and Sysco alone supplies ingredients to a massive number of restaurants, big and small. So that's a lot of opportunities to eat bad lettuce.

>On July 17, the CDC told Americans in no uncertain terms, “Do not eat shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia.” The FDA, meanwhile, noted that Walmart’s Marketside brand was part of the recall, but it did not indicate that it constituted the bulk of the recall.

>It’s unclear why Taylor Farms did not publicly reveal that the majority of the recalled lettuce had been shipped to Walmart stores while Americans were focusing on Taco Bell locations.

>Taylor Farms has drawn scrutiny for its ties to the Trump administration and reluctance to provide information amid the outbreak [...] has refused to clearly report how much tainted lettuce it recalled and where all of it had been shipped.

Yes, it raises questions.

To put a slightly finer point on it, the article lists at least two questions, prefaced with "unclear why" and "unclear where" respectively.

Oh, sure, I guess grammatically they are technically statements that some information is missing... but I hope any English-speaker can tell that the subtext is a demand for more information. (e.g. "The public deserves to know why the chicken crossed the road.")

Fair enough to all of that; even though I did read TFA, I guess the (original, crappy) headline threw me off because it seemed like it was implying that Taco Bell should have received more than 2.5% of the affected lettuce, and I was like "Well obviously Taco Bell is just one of many businesses in the supply chain, that seems like an accurate amount to me."

Which is the wrong angle on my part, but leads to the same point about it being dubious to throw Taco Bell under the bus here.

The article mentioned about California. Based on California public health officials, most of those were traced to recent international travel or visits to taco bell in affected states.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/california-cyclos...

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/ires/?Event=99453

https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety...

How does feces and a parasite get on so much lettuce? I'm assuming it's someone with the parasite shit in the field and it got on some lettuce, but how can like one persons shit get spread to 23,000 people's lettuce? Or is it something else like they are fertilizing the fields with human feces or something?

I think a lot of small scale organizations don't use human feces for food because of pharma contamination. Not particularly surprised if only .001% of food is done correctly in the US though.

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