Taco Bell lettuce linked to cyclospora outbreak across five US states

On Thursday evening, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a stark warning: do not eat shredded iceberg lettuce from Taco Bell locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia. The lettuce, federal investigators determined, carried cyclospora—a microscopic parasite that causes severe, sometimes explosive diarrhea—and it had already sickened thousands of people across the country.

The outbreak has become the largest on record. Michigan, where the contamination appears to have hit hardest, is reporting more than 5,000 confirmed cases, including roughly 100 hospitalizations. Another 2,000 probable and suspected cases have surfaced in other states. The previous peak, set in 2019, was 4,700 cases spread across the entire nation. This time, one state alone has exceeded that number.

The Food and Drug Administration traced the contaminated lettuce to a single supplier: Taylor Fresh Foods, based in Salinas, California. More specifically, investigators identified a particular independent farm in central Mexico affiliated with the company as the source. Taylor Fresh Foods announced Friday that it was voluntarily pulling all iceberg lettuce sourced from that region of Mexico from American supermarkets and restaurants. In a statement, the company expressed deep concern for those who had fallen ill and acknowledged the damage to public trust in fresh produce safety. The company has a troubled history with foodborne illness—it was linked to a cyclosporiasis outbreak in 2013 and an E. coli outbreak tied to onions at McDonald's in 2024.

Cyclospora is a heat-loving parasite that infects the intestines and spreads through fecal contamination. People typically become infected by eating fruits or vegetables exposed to contaminated irrigation water. The illness it causes, cyclosporiasis, is usually not life-threatening and responds to antibiotic treatment. But the symptoms are severe enough that some people require hospitalization, and the infection can linger for weeks.

What makes this outbreak particularly difficult to contain is that cyclospora cases are notoriously hard to trace. The parasite cannot be grown in laboratory conditions, making it difficult to confirm contamination on produce. Standard food-poisoning tests often do not screen for it. And because cyclospora can hide in common ingredients—basil, coriander, lettuce—that appear in many different dishes, sick people may struggle to identify what they actually ate. In North Carolina, where cases have surpassed 300, health officials noted that people reported consuming parsley, coriander, and lettuce before falling ill, but could not definitively link those ingredients to their infections.

Complicating the picture further is that not everyone sickened in this outbreak necessarily ate at Taco Bell. Michigan health officials reported Friday that many of the ill people in their state had no connection to the chain. This suggests that while the Taco Bell lettuce is one confirmed source, the broader surge in cyclospora cases likely stems from multiple sources and multiple contamination events.

Experts attribute the rising trend in cyclospora cases over the past decade to two factors: climate change, which may be creating conditions favorable to the parasite, and improved detection methods that catch cases that would have gone undiagnosed in the past. For years, cyclospora outbreaks were rare in the United States, partly because the illness was simply not being looked for. As testing has improved and awareness has grown, the true scope of the problem has become visible. The current outbreak, spanning more than 30 states, represents not just a public health crisis but also a reckoning with how much cyclospora illness may have been circulating undetected all along.