Mexican regulator said it found no cyclospora at the facility

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday said its inspectors detected cyclospora at a Taylor Farms lettuce farm in Guanajuato state, Mexico, the site the agency has linked to the largest foodborne cyclospora outbreak in U.S. history.

FDA inspectors said they found the parasite in two places: a wastewater tank and a drainage ditch used for lettuce cultivation. The agency said it remained unclear how the lettuce became infected.

The FDA’s announcement comes less than a month after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared an end to the multi-state outbreak, which infected nearly 13,000 people across 21 states and led to 570 hospitalizations and two deaths. It also follows a separate investigation by Mexico’s food safety authority, which concluded that cyclospora was not detected in the lettuce or water at the facility. Mexico’s conclusion came days after the FDA retracted a faulty test result that had incorrectly identified cyclospora in a sample of Taylor Farms lettuce collected at the U.S. border.

The FDA sent its investigators to the farm more than six weeks before Friday’s announcement. The visit was the agency’s first time there in more than seven years, a gap that followed a steep drop in international food safety inspections after the Covid-19 pandemic.

The agency said its samples provide “strong epidemiological data” linking the outbreak to the Taylor Farms site, though it did not specify how the contamination reached the lettuce. Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that causes an intestinal illness called cyclosporiasis. The CDC describes its hallmark symptom as watery diarrhea “with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements,” along with loss of appetite, weight loss, stomach cramps, bloating and increased digestive gas. Cyclosporiasis is less common than foodborne illnesses caused by salmonella or E. coli.

In a separate statement, Taylor Farms attributed the contamination cited by the FDA to an independent grower “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.