Late last week, Taylor Farms posted a notice to its website explaining that it is “voluntarily removing all iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico from the U.S. market, because it has the potential to be contaminated with Cyclospora.” The company advised consumers “who have purchased the recalled iceberg lettuce” to throw it out. But who purchased the lettuce? Good luck figuring that out!

As food safety lawyer Bill Marler pointed out, the recall notice refers to the recalled “brands” by abbreviations, none of which are familiar to consumers. Marler offered his best guesses for what these codes—CV (Cross Valley Farms), JB (Jack in the Box), MARK (Markon), MKTSD (Marketside), PK (Peak Fresh Produce), SUB (Subway), SY (Sysco), TF (Taylor Farms)—may mean, but his post makes clear these are merely inferences. Taylor Farms updated its recall notice yesterday, but it did nothing to clarify the ambiguities highlighted by Marler. Consumers who bought contaminated Taylor Farms lettuce from Walmart will just have to figure out that MKTSD refers to the Walmart private label brand.

By all appearances, Taylor Farms has issued a recall notice that does not actually seek to inform consumers.

What would a better notice look like? For one, it would appear on FDA’s website, not on the company’s accused of causing the outbreak. It would provide coherent descriptions of the recalled products along with pictures of the labels and packaging so consumers could easily determine whether they purchased a recalled product. And it would name the retail consignees—i.e. the individual stores or restaurants—that sold the contaminated product.

Consumer advocates have called on FDA to publish the names and locations of retailers selling recalled foods for years. The policy is a no brainer, not least because the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has been doing it since 2008. But FDA, citing a legal obligation to protect “confidential commercial information,” has claimed it can only provide this information for 1) foods not easily identified by retail packaging and 2) foods determined to likely still be in the consumer’s possession. Since the recalled salad mix sitting in your fridge is “easily identified” by its packaging (never mind the company’s description of it), you are not entitled to know that your neighborhood Walmart was selling a recalled product.

But wait, shouldn’t Taylor Farms want to inform as many of its customers as possible to avoid making more people sick? Why does the company’s recall notice contain a list of “brands” seemingly designed to be ignored? We can only speculate, but the company’s management may simply be betting that all of the contaminated product has worked its way through the system.

They may be right. A lot of time has passed since the first victims got sick. The first of the 1,644 cases in the CDC count dates back to May 1. Two weeks may pass between the time a consumer eats a contaminated product and the onset of cyclosporiasis symptoms. The time it takes epidemiologists to connect illnesses to a contaminated food adds to the delay. The growing season for iceberg lettuce in Central Mexico, the suspected origin of the outbreak, only goes through early summer.

But make no mistake, data painstakingly collected from cyclosporiasis victims and the food retailers where they ate—retailers like Taco Bell—have fingered Taylor Farms lettuce as the likely culprit behind a massive outbreak. Public health officials would have more evidence to go on if FDA hadn't issued an 11^th hour suspension of its food traceability rule shortly after the new Administration took over. But no matter, the fact that regulators have not been able to find a lettuce sample that tests positive for Cyclospora does not vindicate the company’s product. The pathogen is notoriously difficult to test for, with food safety experts likening it to “finding a needle in haystack.”  

Bottom line: consumers should not eat the foods listed on the Taylor Farms’ recall notice, and they should keep checking to see if the list is expanded. Hopefully, the company and FDA will soon make it easier on consumers to understand that list.