On Friday, federal health officials finally put an end date on the largest Cyclospora outbreak in U.S. history. Nearly 13,000 people across 21 states had been sickened, 570 hospitalized and two had died after an outbreak linked to shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms. The CDC declared the outbreak over; the FDA, meanwhile, is still trying to determine exactly how the lettuce became contaminated.
There are plenty of unsettling facts to choose from in the accounting of this summer’s outbreak. But one of the stranger ones is that, somewhere along the way, Taco Bell became a model of competent public-health communication.
