Taylor Farms is at the center of a current cyclospora outbreak linked to its lettuce, and the question for shoppers is simple: Is it safe to eat lettuce right now? The company also gave more than $2 million to conservative political groups in 2025 while it was expanding its food-safety lobbying.
The donations included $1 million to MAGA Inc. and $1.1 million to other super PACs dedicated to electing Republicans. Bruce Taylor, the chairman and CEO, separately gave more than $900,000 to Republican PACs and candidates since 2020, including to John Cornyn and Marsha Blackburn.
Bruce Taylor and 2025 donations
From 2020 through the end of 2024, Taylor Farms gave more than $1.6 million to conservative PACs, including a total of $850,000 to AFP Action. In early 2025, the company hired lobbyists at Sidley Austin to advocate on regulation of food safety, and since then it has spent $810,000 on lobbying.
That spending came before the current cyclospora outbreak became the company’s most visible problem. The source says the outbreak has sickened thousands of people across multiple states, while Taylor Farms remains the lettuce supplier at the center of it.
HHS and Taylor Farms
The HHS account posted on Monday that Taylor Farms’ political donations did not influence the Trump administration’s response to the outbreak. It wrote, “This is how the FAKE NEWS works: imply collusion, ignore the facts,” and added, “Nothing influences our decisions except science and the safety of the American people.”
Taylor Farms said the FDA apologized after announcing a false-positive test of a sample of Taylor Farms’ lettuce, but the FDA told reporters that no official apology happened. Taylor Farms executives also met with White House and FDA officials to discuss shortfalls in the government agencies’ response.
FDA history with Taylor Farms
The company has faced federal scrutiny before. The FDA named Taylor Farms as a source of a cyclospora outbreak in 2013, when hundreds became sick, and Taylor Farms voluntarily recalled multiple products containing celery in 2015 because they may have been contaminated.
Marion Nestle, a food policy expert, said, “The FDA has regulations in place for what food producers are supposed to be doing, but nobody wants to do it—because it's expensive and difficult.” For shoppers, the immediate practical point is narrower than the outbreak headline: the current warning is tied to lettuce linked to Taylor Farms, not every produce item in the market.
