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The United States Food and Drug Administration (or FDA) reported on Friday that its inspectors detected cyclospora at the Mexican farm attributed to the largest outbreak of illness caused by said parasite in United States history.
Despite the finding, the FDA indicated that it is not clear how the parasite reached the lettuce at the Taylor Farms facility. The agency noted that it has already closed its investigation into the outbreak, which caused nearly 13,000 cases of diarrhea and other illnesses throughout the United States.
The announcement comes more than six weeks after the agency sent its investigators to the farm in Guanajuato, Mexico. It was the agency's first visit there in more than seven years, following a sharp drop in international food safety inspections after the COVID-19 pandemic.
FDA inspectors stated on Friday that they found cyclospora in two locations: a wastewater tank and a drainage ditch used for lettuce cultivation. Although it is not clear how the contamination occurred, the FDA stated that the samples provide “strong 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 “that is no longer part of our supplier program”.
“Our facilities remain closed in central Mexico while we work with our research team to implement enhanced safety protocols from the field to the facility,” the company stated.
United States officials declared last month that the outbreak had ended.
WHAT IS CYCLOSPORA? SYMPTOMS
Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that commonly causes watery diarrhea “with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements,” according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The illness, called cyclosporiasis, is less common than foodborne illnesses caused by other germs, including salmonella and E. coli.
The parasite spreads through human feces, and it is still not clear how the wastewater could have contaminated enough food to make so many people sick.
Regulators from the Mexican food safety authority announced in August that their own investigation did not detect cyclospora in lettuce or water at the facility. That conclusion came days after the FDA was forced to retract an erroneous test result that had incorrectly identified cyclospora in a Taylor Farms lettuce sample collected at the border.
[Publicidad]