The Cyclospora Files  /  02 Is it in my fridge?

Practical guide

You have probably
been buying this company
for thirty years.

Taylor Farms is a private-label supplier. It grows, washes, cuts and bags produce — and then somebody else’s logo goes on the front. Your organic brand, your budget brand and your warehouse-club brand can come out of the same building on the same morning.

An overhead arrangement of mixed salad leaves and greens
Stock imageWashed, bagged and mixed. By the time leaves look like this, the question of which farm they came from has usually stopped being answerable from anything printed on the packet.

Brand reach

Names that can carry this supplier’s produce

A supermarket aisle photographed out of focus
Stock imageOn 4 August the largest food distributor in the country stopped buying this supplier’s Mexican iceberg lettuce, because it knows exactly whose lettuce it buys. Standing in the aisle, you have no equivalent way of knowing.

Read this before you read the list

Appearing here does not mean a product was recalled, contaminated, or unsafe. It means this supplier is known to produce goods sold under that name. Not every item under these brands comes from Taylor Farms — salad kits and prepared greens most often do. The only retail brand named in the company’s own recall notice was Marketside.

  • Earthbound Farm
  • Eat Smart
  • Green Giant Fresh
  • Good & GatherTarget
  • Market PantryTarget
  • Kirkland SignatureCostco
  • Private SelectionKroger
  • Simple TruthKroger
  • MarketsideWalmart · in recall
  • Great ValueWalmart
  • Trader Joe’ssome items only
Source: Rob Beschizza, Boing Boing, 27 July 2026, compiling company and retailer disclosures.

You cannot identify it from the bag

A lot of people online concluded that the printed lot codes beginning “TF” were the tell. Snopes checked. They are not reliable for identifying this company as the source of any given bag of greens.

That is not a cover-up. It is simply how private-label manufacturing works — the entire point is that the maker is invisible. It works perfectly well right up until the moment you need to know.

Two official statements that cannot both be true

On the same weekend, the CDC told NBC News that shredded lettuce sold in grocery stores or served at other restaurants is not affected — while Taylor Farms’ own recall notice listed consumer retail bags of shredded iceberg. We have asked the company to reconcile those. Until someone does, treat the recall notice as the more cautious guide.

At the shop

What food safety specialists suggest

Nothing below is a recall. No fruit has been recalled in this outbreak. This is precautionary guidance from food safety specialists, and the logic is simple: the parasite lives on surfaces, so surfaces you do not eat are surfaces that cannot hurt you.

Safer

Thick peels and rinds

Bananas, citrus, pineapple, watermelon, avocado. The part that could be contaminated is the part you throw away.

Safest

Anything cooked to 70 °C / 158 °F

This is the only step that reliably kills the parasite rather than trying to rinse it off. The CDC recommends it where cooking is practical. Cook spinach, peppers, onions — and for the separate egg recall, cook eggs fully.

Take care

Crevices and folds

Raspberries, blackberries and leafy greens have ridges and crevices that hold onto microscopic organisms. Lettuce is, structurally, an organism-shaped object.

Take care

Pre-cut and pre-bagged

More handling, more surface, more chances. Buying whole and cutting at home puts you back in control of one step.

Recalled

Anything on a live recall notice

Iceberg lettuce covered by the 17 July recall; about 19 million eggs from Midwest Poultry Services; specific frozen organic blueberries; two Latin American–style cheeses; one powdered infant formula. Check the current FDA list — recalls change.

Sources: Food & Wine, 28 July 2026, quoting food safety specialists; CDC guidance via BBC News, 3 August 2026; registered dietitian Martha Henley via 6abc Philadelphia, 27 July 2026.

The uncomfortable part

Washing does not reliably remove it.

The standard official advice is to rinse all fresh produce thoroughly under clean running water, including anything labelled pre-washed. That is good general practice and you should do it.

But specialists have been clear that washing alone may not eliminate this particular parasite, and the product at the centre of the largest outbreak was already prewashed, shredded and sealed before it ever reached a kitchen.

Which is why the 70 °C figure above matters more than the rinse. Heat is the step that works.

Sources: CDC via BBC News; Martha Henley RD via 6abc, 27 July 2026.

Little Hill Podcast  ·  Last updated 5 August 2026

Recalls change. Before acting on anything here, check the FDA recall list for the current position.

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