A nationwide health scare tied to Taco Bell’s lettuce has ballooned into what officials are calling the largest cyclospora outbreak ever recorded in the United States, with nearly 7,000 cases confirmed or under investigation since May 1 and at least 141 people hospitalized, according to CDC data published Tuesday.
The Washington Post reported on July 16 that investigators had identified Taylor Farms as the supplier of the shredded iceberg lettuce linked to the outbreak at Taco Bell restaurants, citing two people familiar with the investigation. CNN and NBC News later corroborated the reporting, though neither the FDA nor the CDC has confirmed the link publicly, and both companies have so far declined to comment on the record.
The outbreak’s epicenter is the Midwest. The CDC has identified at least 400 cases associated specifically with the lettuce outbreak across four states, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky, and a source told CNN those states are where the affected Taco Bell locations are. Michigan has been hit hardest by far. The state’s health department has reported more than 4,300 cases of cyclospora during its outbreak investigation and has interviewed more than 1,000 people as part of that effort.
Health officials in Michigan have been careful with their language, noting that they “cannot say with certainty that every illness is linked to the same source of exposure,” but that the concentrated, sharp increase in cases “strongly suggests that the vast majority of these illnesses are associated with the same outbreak.” Taken together, the case count would make this outbreak the largest of its kind ever documented in the country.
Taco Bell has already moved to get ahead of the fallout. The chain confirmed Thursday that it had pulled lettuce sourced from one of its suppliers in some U.S. states after reports linked the ingredient to the ongoing outbreak. Investigators reportedly traced the supply chain back to lettuce grown in Mexico, according to CBS News, which lines up with earlier CDC findings that fresh imported produce has historically been a common vector for cyclospora contamination in the United States.
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This isn’t the first time Taylor Farms has found itself at the center of a cyclospora investigation. In a previous outbreak, Taylor Farms de Mexico, a division of the California-based produce supplier whose greens also go to chains including Red Lobster and Olive Garden, shipped a parasite-tainted salad mix that sickened hundreds of people across more than a dozen states. That earlier episode led the FDA to trace illness clusters at multiple restaurants back to Taylor Farms de Mexico as a common supplier, prompting the agency to say it was increasing surveillance of green leafy produce exported from Mexico. Attorney Bill Marler, who has litigated foodborne illness cases since the 1990s, noted on his blog this week that both the supplier’s and the restaurant chain’s names have surfaced in lettuce-linked outbreaks before, more than once in Taco Bell’s case.
Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite spread through contaminated food or water and shed in human stool. Infections typically cause watery diarrhea that can last for weeks, along with fatigue, loss of appetite, cramping, and other flu-like symptoms. Unlike bacterial contamination, cyclospora does not spread directly from person to person, which means the outbreak’s scale points investigators toward a shared food source rather than secondary transmission.
As of now, no formal recall for Taylor Farms product has appeared on the FDA’s public recall list for 2026, and both the FDA and CDC have stayed silent on requests to confirm the supplier link on record. The investigation remains active, and health officials in the affected states say the case count could still climb as lab confirmations catch up with the surge in reported symptoms.
