FDA Names Taylor Farms as the Likely Source of the Taco Bell Lettuce Parasite Outbreak

Federal investigators have identified Taylor Farms, the Salinas, California, produce giant, as the likely source of the parasite-contaminated shredded iceberg lettuce behind a fast-growing outbreak that has sickened thousands of Americans, ending weeks in which health officials said publicly they could not name a culprit.

The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, working with state and local health departments, tied the contaminated lettuce to Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. More than 1,600 people with confirmed Cyclospora infections reported eating at Taco Bell across the five-state cluster. Of the case-patients with available information, 141 — about 9 percent — were hospitalized. No deaths have been reported.

The restaurant outbreak sits inside a far larger national surge. Nearly 7,000 cases have been confirmed or are under investigation since May 1, across 34 states, making 2026 the worst year on record for cyclosporiasis in the United States and surpassing the previous high of roughly 4,700 set in 2019. Michigan has been hit hardest, with more than 3,300 cases, followed by northwest Ohio with over 1,100, New York City with more than 400 and Illinois with over 200.

Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that causes watery diarrhea and what health officials describe as frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements, often dragging on for weeks. It responds to antibiotic treatment and is rarely life-threatening. Michigan's health department reached the produce lead the hard way, interviewing more than 1,000 patients. "Early information has shown lettuce as a common product that regularly comes up during investigation," the department said. Its chief medical executive, Natasha Bagdasarian, confirmed how prominently lettuce figured in those interviews.

Taco Bell said it "voluntarily and temporarily removed limited ingredients at select restaurants as a precautionary measure," and the chain has since said the lettuce from the supplier is being indefinitely removed from its supply chain nationwide, with replacements moving into affected states. Taylor Farms has not publicly responded to the investigation. Donald Prater, the FDA's acting deputy commissioner, said the agency "certainly is continuing its traceback investigation on multiple produce items."

It is not the company's first outbreak. Taylor Farms produce was linked to a 2013 cyclospora outbreak traced to a salad mix from a Mexico facility that sickened more than 600 people, and to a 2024 E. coli outbreak involving slivered onions supplied to McDonald's that killed one person. Bill Marler, the food safety attorney representing victims in the current outbreak, blamed part of the detection delay on shrinking federal food-safety surveillance funding. "This is 2026," he said. "This is the kind of thing that should not be happening in a first-world country."