By Aishwarya Venugopal, Waylon Cunningham and Emily Schmall
July 17 (Reuters) – Taylor Farms, a California-based lettuce supplier, and food distributor Sysco are removing iceberg lettuce sourced from Mexico, the companies said on Friday, as they seek to curtail the largest foodborne illness outbreak in the United States in recent years.
Taylor Farms said it was removing the lettuce from central Mexico based on information provided on Thursday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The company added in its statement that no Taylor Farms-branded salads or kits are associated with the cyclosporiasis outbreak, and that no Taylor Farms-branded salad kits contain iceberg lettuce.
An industry source who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media told Reuters that Taylor Farms called clients on Thursday, including Taco Bell owner Yum Brands and Sysco, to pull their shredded lettuce from distribution. Sysco, the biggest U.S. food distributor, confirmed on Friday it was withdrawing all Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce from Mexico at the supplier’s request. It halted sales and distribution on Thursday, it said.
The lettuce, which the FDA said late on Thursday came from Mexico, was produced as 5-pound (2.3-kg) bags at Taylor Farms’ facility in Guanajuato, Mexico, the source said, adding that Sysco widely distributes such bags to hospitals, ballparks and fast-food chains.
The scope of the recall is unclear. The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating the outbreak linked to shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. The parasitic illness can cause diarrhea and other gastrointestinal symptoms. The CDC has reported around 100 hospitalizations and no deaths.
FOOD PROCESSING METHOD A FACTOR?
The number of people falling ill could be partly attributed to the way a big producer like Taylor Farms processes food, said Darin Detwiler, a food safety expert and adjunct professor at Michigan State University.
He said while consumers tend to think a bag of lettuce comes from one head, “there literally could be upwards of 1,000 heads of lettuce that get into the bigger mix as these bags are packed and sent to distributors.”
Some experts think the outbreak may be nearly over. “I doubt that there’s any infectious lettuce still on the market,” said Donald Schaffner, a food science professor at Rutgers University, adding that it was likely eaten weeks ago.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, did not respond to requests for comment. Yum did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Taylor Farms’ growing and processing facilities in Mexico were the source of another major U.S. cyclosporiasis outbreak. A 2013 outbreak sickened more than 600 people in 25 states, according to the CDC, and was traced to salad mix from Taylor Farms de Mexico in Guanajuato.
THOUSANDS OF MICHIGAN CASES
Michigan health officials reported 5,002 cases of cyclosporiasis as of Friday, an increase of 690 cases from a day earlier. The outbreak began on May 1 and has been concentrated in Michigan, with Ohio and New York also reporting a large number of infections.
On Thursday, the FDA said Taco Bell would discontinue using lettuce from a supplier identified by the agency in its investigation.
Taco Bell and the FDA did not name the supplier, but the food safety regulator said its traceback investigation identified a single supplier of iceberg lettuce from Mexico used by Taco Bell locations where people ate before becoming ill.
Taylor Farms supplied the slivered onions identified as the likely source of the 2024 E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder burgers, which led to a recall. One person was killed and 104 people were sickened in the outbreak, according to the CDC.
Taco Bell’s daily foot traffic on July 11 was down 5.8%, a few days after reports that Taco Bell pulled ingredients from some locations, according to data firm Placer.ai.
Foodborne illness outbreaks can weigh heavily on restaurant stocks. McDonald’s faced scrutiny during a cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to salads in 2018, while Chipotle grappled with a series of E. coli and norovirus outbreaks that hurt sales, damaged consumer confidence and pressured its shares.
“The recent outbreak will likely dent (Taco Bell’s) near-term same-store sales growth,” said Ari Felhandler, an analyst at Morningstar, adding that some consumers would opt to dine at competitors outside the incident’s spotlight to mitigate perceived risk, even when prudent precautions are in place.
Yum shares dipped 2.7% and Sysco shares eased 0.7%.
The CDC says cyclosporiasis is treatable and that most people with healthy immune systems recover without treatment — though without treatment, the illness may last a month or longer.
“People don’t really die from this,” Schaffner, the Rutgers professor, told reporters in a briefing on Thursday. “But they can be miserable for a long time.”
(Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal, Anuja Bharat Mistry, Sneha S K in Bengaluru, Waylon Cunningham in New York and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Diti Pujara, Anil D’Silva, Rod Nickel)
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