Michigan health officials investigating a growing cyclosporiasis outbreak said they had to ask Taco Bell three times for supply-chain records before federal regulators could trace the suspected source, according to the New York Times.
The delay mattered because each extra day could slow efforts to identify contaminated ingredients and prevent more people from getting sick.
Here's what to know
Many people who became sick with cyclosporiasis reported eating at Taco Bell prior to falling ill.
Emails obtained through Michigan's open records law show investigators sought the chain's records on July 1, then again on July 3 and July 6, according to the Times.
After Taco Bell turned over some records on July 6, Michigan officials and the Food and Drug Administration continued the search for documentation. The FDA requested further records on July 8, but the agency did not receive the full set it needed until July 13.
With those documents in hand, investigators traced the outbreak to lettuce from a Taylor Farms facility in Mexico, according to the New York Times.
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The outlet reported that a federal traceability rule would have required those records to be produced within 24 hours, but that requirement has been delayed until 2028.
More background
Traceback investigations are often, among other things, a race against time.
If officials cannot quickly determine where ingredients came from and where they went, contaminated food will remain in circulation longer.
This puts more people at risk as days tick by and makes it more difficult and complex to inform the public about a serious food supply risk.
Families can be left wondering where an illness originated, restaurants can face confusion and reputational harm, and public confidence in the food system can erode when answers take too long to come.
The now-delayed federal rule was designed to make this kind of investigation faster and more precise.
What's being done?
In the end, state and federal officials completed the traceback and identified the suspected source.
That required repeated outreach from Michigan's rapid response team, followed by additional FDA requests, before sufficient supply-chain information was assembled.
The process still relies on manual follow-up rather than automatic compliance, as an email to Taco Bell's parent company, Yum Brands, from Lauren Edwards, an epidemiologist on the state's rapid response team, showed.
"With the rapid nature of this outbreak and the number of people affected, we need to ensure we are completing traceback in a timely manner to preserve public health," she wrote.
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