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Transcript:
I want to talk more about America’s diarrhea epidemic. So I’m gonna. Yes, I did already make a video just a few weeks ago all about how the Trump administration set the stage for an outbreak of cyclosporiasis by ending federal monitoring of cyclospora and other foodborne pathogens, firing a bunch of experts, cutting funding to the people in charge of this stuff, and then just trying to ignore the poopacalypse in the hopes that it would go away and everyone would forget about it.
But it didn’t just go away. When I made my video a month ago there were a few thousand cases and 80 hospitalizations. As of the making of this video, there have been 6,000 illnesses across 15 states with at least two deaths directly related to the source: iceberg lettuce imported from Mexico by a conglomerate called Taylor Farms. The total number of cases from all sources is up to around 12,000, compared to 4,000 last year, and it’s only August.
It’s worth noting that not all of those are necessary aberrations: when there isn’t a very well-publicized outbreak of cyclosporiasis, many people who have diarrhea for a few days don’t think to go get tested for it, so the official numbers are overall lower.
But there definitely HAVE been more cases of this, and other foodborne illnesses, thanks to Trump’s terrible policies. A hundred people got salmonella from eggs, and another 430 got it from jalapenos, with 15% of those ending up in the hospital.
And we have absolutely no one in the federal government providing consistent guidance or reassurance, which makes everything a thousand times worse. California lettuce wasn’t infected, but consumers are so scared of fresh produce now that growers here aren’t even bothering to harvest their crops. They’re just running over perfectly good heads of lettuce and plowing them back into the soil because they know no one is going to buy them. There is a funny little bit of irony to this, since farmers overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump in 2024, and a competent Kamala Harris administration would have identified the source of the outbreak, got it under control, and reassured consumers within a week of the news breaking.
I was first inspired to make a new video on this topic after watching season 13 episode 19 of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, titled “Cyclospora & Police Surveillance Technology” outside the US but simply “Police Tools” inside the US, where they’ve only made the part about police surveillance available on YouTube. I don’t know why, but if they’re scared to put it online then I am, too, and I won’t play you a clip. I’ll just describe that Oliver spends a significant amount of time in it mocking Taco Bell, reading out their statement, which he calls a “notes app non-apology,” about how they removed all Taylor Farms lettuce from their locations and ended with “See you in the drive-thru,” to which Oliver replies, “No you fucking won’t!”
He then gives them a quick compliment about acting quickly before going into how the Trump Administration did all this.
Now, I need to say a few things upfront: first, I think John Oliver is great. I rarely disagree with him, I think he’s quite funny, and he does a great job of communicating progressive ideals to a mainstream audience.
Second, I hate Taco Bell. I think it’s disgusting, and should barely qualify as “food.” I spend a lot of time next to the most beautiful Taco Bell in the world, that even has a walk-up window for surfers to order from the deck, and the only time I went there was after they upgraded to a “cantina” and started selling booze slushies, which also sucked so I never went back. I live in the Bay Area. If I want a good taco, I’ll go to a window with metal bars on it and a name like Taqueria El Paisa@.com like god intended. I’m not joking, that’s actually a good taco place on International.
And third, I get that the Taco Bell jokes write themselves. I specifically did not mention Taco Bell in my first video for the reason I’m about to get into, but the first commenter who posted “MAHA Blast” really had me in admiration of them.
But back then, I felt it was important to not distract from the fact that the true problem was NOT any end user of the product, considering that you can’t just wash away all the pathogens. The problem was at the source, which we now know to be Taylor Farms.
Also, I really, really did not want to punish Taco Bell by associating this outbreak with them. I felt it was unfair, because they were simply taking the action that our government refused to do: they saw reports of people falling ill, tracked them to figure out where the epicenter was, and identified the actual source as Taylor Farms, pulling that produce from their products and announcing to customers that they had done so. If we shame a fast food chain for being the first one to stand up and protect consumers, we encourage corporations in the future to participate in the cover-up, making things worse.
I still believe all that: Taylor Farms is a shady ass company that has a long history of food safety issues. Attorney Bill Marler compiled a list of their various outbreaks since 2009, when they sickened 145 people with shredded lettuce. 631 people in 25 states were sickened with their bagged salad mix in 2013, in 2015 19 people were infected with E. coli from their celery and onion blend with one requiring a kidney transplant, four people were infected in 2023, 104 people sick and one dead from yellow onions in 2024, 89 sick and one dead from romaine also in 2024, and now the current outbreak, which is ongoing.
Each time you blame Taco Bell, you obscure the fact that the true culprit is, in fact, Taylor Farms, and they’ve been doing this for quite awhile.
But! I’m so glad I didn’t fire off a video immediately after watching that John Oliver episode. Because shortly afterward, news broke that Taco Bell’s parent company, Yum! Brands, secretly met with state health authorities in Michigan about the outbreak on July 2nd, WEEKS before the company officially alerted consumers. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services asked to connect with the company’s supply chain quality assurance and communications teams, but apparently Yum hadn’t taken appropriate action by July 6th so the state came back and basically said, “Look, we’re pretty sure you guys are wrapped up in this so please get us the information we need right the fuck now.” I’m paraphrasing.
The following day, some Michigan Taco Bell locations put up signs about food being recalled, which had not actually happened yet and which led reporters to start asking questions. Eventually, it looks as though Taco Bell was forced to take action.
When you combine this information with the previous information about how Taco Bell has continued to use Taylor Farms despite a lengthy history of foodborne illness, it suddenly seems less like a corporation acting responsibly to protect consumers and more like a corporation attempting to get out ahead of some potentially bad press.
Like I say, I still think that we need to focus more on Taylor Farms, but in doing so myself I wandered a bit too far into the false notion that Taco Bell is anything more than a multibillion dollar orphan-crushing machine in which executives have probably developed a routine calculation for how little they can pay for ingredients without incurring too many additional costs associated with people getting sick and dying from eating those ingredients. Taco Bell may not be the ultimate villain here, but they’re still a villain. The hero is the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, whose experts tracked this outbreak down and did their best to protect consumers even though they lacked the support that usually would have come from a normal, functioning federal Department of Health and Human Services.
One final point worth noting here is that Taylor Farms’ parent company, Taylor Fresh Foods, Inc., donated a million dollars to Trump’s MAGA, Inc. super PAC just six days after his FDA delayed a rule that would “have required more recordkeeping steps for people who manufacture, process, pack or hold certain foods.” Was that a quid pro quo? I’m not sure, but I bet Taylor Fresh Foods sure is thankful they now have two-and-a-half years to get away with their current standard of recordkeeping.
This is a story of how government regulation can actually benefit us, and it puts the lie to the Libertarian idea that companies will surely police themselves because diarrhea is bad for business. It’s also a story of how we must keep these giant corporations out of our politics. All they care about is making more money, and it doesn’t matter if a few people shit themselves to death if it means they can get an extra private jet for their CEO.
