Federal health officials say shredded iceberg lettuce imported from Mexico and served at Taco Bell restaurants is a source of Cyclospora infections in five states, putting a specific fast-food ingredient at the center of a wider outbreak of cyclosporiasis.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that their traceback investigation tied the lettuce to Taco Bell locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia where people who became ill said they had eaten.
Cyclospora is a foodborne parasite. The illness it causes, cyclosporiasis, has been associated in this outbreak with explosive, watery diarrhea, according to federal officials. That is the clinical reality behind the familiar food-safety euphemism “gastrointestinal illness.”
The CDC and FDA said investigators traced the shredded iceberg lettuce back to a single supplier in Mexico. The agencies did not publicly identify the supplier. The Washington Post, citing sources, reported that the supplier is Taylor Farms.
Traceback work is the supply-chain version of reading the logs: investigators start with where sick people ate, then work backward through restaurants, distributors and suppliers to find a common ingredient. In this case, federal officials said that path led to shredded iceberg lettuce used at Taco Bell restaurants in the five listed states.
The FDA and CDC are advising consumers not to eat iceberg lettuce from Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia during the current outbreak. The agencies said shredded iceberg lettuce sold in grocery stores or served at other restaurants has not been implicated so far.
Cases extend beyond the Taco Bell cluster
Cyclosporiasis cases have been reported in 34 states, and officials are investigating multiple suspected clusters and outbreaks, according to the CDC. The agency is reporting 1,645 laboratory-confirmed cases nationwide, including 141 hospitalizations.
Those CDC numbers do not capture every illness reported by state and local health departments. Some local tallies include probable cases, which makes their counts larger than the federal laboratory-confirmed total.
Michigan, one of the states tied to the Taco Bell lettuce finding, reported 5,002 cases as of July 17, along with 102 hospitalizations. Federal officials described the state as heavily affected in the multi-state outbreak linked to Taco Bell.
Taylor Farms has appeared in a recent fast-food outbreak investigation before. In 2024, the company was implicated in a multi-state E. coli outbreak linked to contaminated onions served at McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants. FDA inspectors later found multiple violations at a Taylor Farms facility in Colorado, according to prior reporting cited by Ars Technica.
For now, the public-health instruction is narrow: avoid iceberg lettuce from Taco Bell restaurants in the five affected states. Federal officials have not said that all Taco Bell locations, grocery-store shredded lettuce, or lettuce at other restaurants are part of this finding.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.
