The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that its inspectors detected cyclospora on a Mexican farm, responsible for the largest outbreak of foodborne illness from the parasite in U.S. history.
FDA inspectors said Friday they found cyclospora in two locations: a sewage tank and a drainage ditch used for growing lettuce. They said it was unclear how the lettuce became infected.
The agency’s announcement comes less than a month after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declared an end to the multistate outbreak, which has infected nearly 13,000 people in 21 states and resulted in 570 hospitalizations and two deaths.
It also follows an announcement from regulators at Mexico’s food safety authority, who conducted their own investigation and said cyclospora had not been detected in the facility’s lettuce or water. This finding came days after the FDA was forced to retract a faulty test result that incorrectly identified cyclospora in a sample of Taylor Farms lettuce collected at the border.
The FDA’s announcement comes more than six weeks after the agency sent its investigators to the Guanajuato farm. It was the agency’s first visit in more than seven years, following a sharp decline in international food safety inspections following the Covid pandemic.
Although it is unclear how the contamination occurred, the FDA claimed the samples provided “robust epidemiological data” linking the outbreak to the Taylor Farms site.
In a separate statement, Taylor Farms attributed the contamination cited by the FDA to an independent producer “who is no longer part of our supplier program.”
“Our facility remains closed in central Mexico as we work with our research team to implement enhanced safety protocols from the field to the facility,” the company said.
Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that typically causes watery diarrhea “accompanied by frequent and sometimes explosive stools,” according to the CDC. Other symptoms included loss of appetite and weight, stomach cramps, bloating and increased digestive gas.
This illness, called cyclosporosis, is less common than foodborne illnesses caused by other germs, including salmonella and E coli.
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