Lettuce Farmers Are at the Center of an E. Coli Lawsuit

In November of 2024, an outbreak of E. coli sent dozens of people to the hospital left one person dead. In the months that followed that outbreak, the general public is learning more about the circumstances behind it — and are also taking steps to respond to the tragic events of last fall. One of those responses to those events is beginning to play out in the legal realm, with an agricultural business facing big questions about whether or not it did enough to keep people safe from the bacteria in question.

Writing at the Los Angeles Times, Malia Mendez has details on the lawsuit, which nine people affected by the outbreak filed against Taylor Fresh Foods. As Mendez points out, the lawsuit being filed is what raised awareness of the outbreak, which the Food and Drug Administration did not publicize at the time.

According to an NBC News report published earlier this month, the FDA opted not to release details about the outbreak because they believed that all of the affected lettuce was gone by that point in the agency’s investigation. NBC News quoted Frank Yiannas — who was the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response — who described the FDA’s response to this recent outbreak as “disturbing.”

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The agency is urging people to follow standard food safety protocol in the meantime.

As for the current lawsuit, Taylor Fresh Foods maintained its innocence and told the Los Angeles Times that it planned to respond to the lawsuit. “We perform extensive raw and finished product testing on all our product and there was no evidence of contamination,” a spokesperson for the company told the Times.