Cyclospora outbreak linked to Taylor Farms raises questions about food safety oversight and company response
A cyclospora outbreak in 2026 has sickened more than 22,000 people across a large portion of the United States, with more than 6,000 confirmed cases connected to Taylor Farms' central Mexico processing facility. The FDA and CDC have traced the outbreak to lettuce from that facility, and two people in Michigan with significant underlying health conditions died in connection with the outbreak. Taylor Farms issued a recall and said it invested hundreds of millions of dollars annually in food safety.
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The 2026 cyclospora outbreak is, according to food safety attorney Bill Marler, "by far the largest foodborne illness outbreak that we've had in 30 years." More than 22,000 Americans have been sickened, with more than 6,000 confirmed cases linked to Taylor Farms' processing facility in Guanajuato, Mexico — the same facility health officials connected to a smaller cyclospora outbreak in 2013.
CNN's investigation found that Taylor Farms has been linked by health officials to at least five outbreaks of cyclospora and E. coli over the past decade, including a 2024 E. coli outbreak tied to onions supplied to McDonald's that caused 104 cases across 14 states and one death, and a separate 2024 romaine lettuce outbreak that sickened 89 people across 15 states and caused one death. In both cases, Taylor Farms said its own testing found no evidence of contamination. An unnamed former senior FDA official described the McDonald's onion investigation as a "slam dunk," and said the company went to great lengths to discourage the FDA from publicly naming it. Taylor Farms denied allegations related to the romaine outbreak in a court filing.
Food safety experts cited by CNN said Taylor Farms' repeated assertions of clean internal tests are misleading because pathogens are transient and consumers eat the contaminated product before it can be tested. "People eat the evidence," Marler said. The FDA had not inspected Taylor Farms' Mexico facility since 2019, and in the first half of 2026, only five of more than 160,000 shipments from that operation were physically inspected at the US border — a rate of roughly 0.003%.