AI Summary
5 min readEvery summer has a theme. In 2019, Megan Thee Stallion gave us "hot girl summer." This year, there is a parasite called Cyclospora. It has infected more than 1,600 people so far, with thousands more suspected cases. The parasite can cause explosive diarrhea, and to the best of our knowledge, it is mostly spread by human poop. Investigators traced the outbreak to shredded lettuce from a company called Taylor Farms, a multi-billion dollar operation that came out of nowhere 30 years ago and turned into the leading salad supplier in America, selling to Taco Bell, McDonald's, Costco, Whole Foods, Aldi, and Safeway. The recall covers 27 states. And this outbreak, as Planet Money noticed, reveals two very strange and fascinating systems that have had a huge impact on how safe our food is: the rise of Big Lettuce and the fight to make fresh vegetables safe to eat.
The Miracle of the Breathable Bag
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:06) **The Summer Parasite** - Introduces the 2019 Cyclospora outbreak, which has infected over 1,600 people, linked to Taco Bell and a lettuce recall from Taylor Farms.
- 2 (01:54) **Two Experts, Two Revolutions** - Introduces Jim Gorny (FDA food safety rule writer) and Joe Pizzini (Taylor Farms agriculture director).
- 3 (04:16) **The Lettuce Supply Chain Miracle** - Sets up the two pivotal moments in lettuce history that changed how we eat and the risks involved.
- 4 (05:56) **Revolution #1: The Crunch That Travels** - Iceberg lettuce's natural durability made it the first fresh vegetable to be shipped nationwide and defy seasons.
- 5 (07:07) **The Bag Salad Miracle** - The invention of breathable plastic film allowed chopped lettuce to stay fresh, creating the "value-added" bag salad industry.
- 6 (09:07) **The Rise of Taylor Farms** - The economics of bag salad favored huge, capital-intensive factories, leading to a market dominated by three processors, with Taylor Farms as the largest.
- 7 (10:52) **The Downside of Scale** - As bag salad exploded, so did foodborne illness outbreaks, because one contaminated farm can now affect the entire country (the "multiplier effect").
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Show Notes
So on today’s show, we tell you just how much lettuce Americans eat every year (SO MUCH!), how bagged lettuce came to dominate grocery store shelves, what that means for food safety, and why these outbreaks continue to happen — despite the FDA’s efforts to stop them.
Check out other related episodes:
Food Scare Squad
How refrigeration took over the world
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This episode was hosted by Jeff Guo and Emma Peaslee. It was produced by Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Marianne McCune and it was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Annlie Huang. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.
Music: NPR Source Audio - "Electric Leak," "West Green Road," and "Melty Heart"
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