The Food and Drug Administration said on Friday that it had found two samples of the cyclospora parasite during its investigation of Taylor Farms facilities in Mexico, strong new evidence that an outbreak that sickened thousands in the United States this summer came from lettuce produced by the company.\n\nThe agency sent inspectors to the company’s processing plant and nearby farms in August, about a month after Taylor Farms recalled bags of lettuce sent to retailers and restaurants across the nation. Friday’s announcement disclosed the first results of that inquiry: Inspectors discovered cyclospora in water from a tank that held outgoing wastewater from the Taylor Farms de Mexico processing facility, which chopped fresh lettuce. A second positive sample was found in sediment in a drainage ditch at an iceberg lettuce farm that operates as an independent grower for Taylor Farms.\n\nOver the course of the summer, the cyclospora outbreak linked to Taylor Farms caused nearly 13,000 illnesses, 570 hospitalizations and two deaths in 21 states.
It was the nation’s largest outbreak of food-borne illness in decades. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared the outbreak over in September. Taylor Farms ultimately recalled 236,192 cases of lettuce sold to stores, restaurants and distributors including Walmart, Subway, Jack in the Box, Taco Bell and Sysco.\n\nThe F.
D. A. said it is still working to determine if the genotype of the cyclospora samples found in Mexico matched samples collected from sick patients in the United States. Cases of cyclospora are challenging to link genetically because the parasite cannot be cultured in a laboratory the way that bacteria like salmonella or E. coli can.
This means that investigators cannot easily identify whether different cases of cyclospora share a common strain.
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