Senator Elizabeth Warren has given Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. until August 27 to turn over all communications between his department and Taylor Farms, the supplier at the center of the largest cyclosporiasis outbreak recorded in the United States. The demand, released on August 13, landed the same day the Food and Drug Administration announced that its investigators had begun on-site inspections at the central Mexican operation where the implicated iceberg lettuce was grown.
That timing is the story. Federal agencies first named Taylor Farms lettuce in mid-July. Inspectors did not begin work at the growing site until nearly four weeks later, and the outbreak has kept expanding in the interval. The official outbreak count now stands at 9,481 illnesses across 17 states, with 398 hospitalizations and two deaths, both in Michigan, according to figures the FDA updated on August 13.
