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- Hacker News
- Taylor Farms uses slave labor, so everyone should be boycotting their products anyhow.
The irony here is that proper traditional salsa roja cooks the tomatoes, peppers (jalapeños, etc.), and most vegetables before grinding, so it would be safe from Salmonella in particular as temperature over 165 ℉ / 74 ℃ inactivates it.
For salsa fresca, sourcing ingredients locally and preferably homegrown would be best because the biggest risks are in all type of uncooked ingredients like cilantro.
- Hmm. It's almost as though cutting 20% of the FDA might have had an impact on food safety.
"US FDA suspends food safety quality checks after staff cuts" (2025) - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-fda-suspends-food-safety...
"How safe is the food supply after federal cutbacks? Experts are worried" (2025) - https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/05/29/nx...
"Trump purge at FDA and USDA triggers food safety ‘brain drain’" (2026) - https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2026/02/16/fda-and-usd...
"What was lost at the FDA" (2026) - https://www.statnews.com/2026/05/07/fda-rebuilding-after-dog... | https://archive.ph/XpvdS
by 0xbadcafebee - I’m not saying it’s not a factor but we’ve had plenty of food recalls in the past:
https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/recalls-public-health-...
by Auracle - Same thing happened with railroads when they deregulated.
Trains got longer and heavier. Maintenance and safety became less of a priority. Required improvements were no longer required.
by chneu - I’ve been wondeing if this is a similar phenomenon to plane crashes being reported more when there is a plane crash, thus leading people to believe, incorrectly, that there are more plane crashes. Is it maybe common that recalls happen with relative frequency and it’s just a cost of doing business and they’re routine so not reported on? Or is this company really screwing up badly?by peterlk
- this would be a great question for an administration that wanted to just stop counting covid deaths.
great question guy.
by cyanydeez - This company really bribed the Trump administration to relax health and safety oversight of their operations. The resulting increase in frequency of contamination by filth (feces, poop, crap, shit, turds, brown water, sewage, reclaimed biosolids, whatever you desire to call it) is an direct and easily foreseeable consequence of that reduction of inspection and control. They fertilized their crops with wastewater to save money.
https://www.wired.com/story/diarrhea-outbreak-taylor-farms-m...
by buildsjets - That's a good question that I don't have the answer to, but I know where someone sufficiently motivated and curious can find it definitively.
https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety...
I sorted by the far right column and Taylor Foods does show up more than some, but I don't know how that compares to the volume they're selling. I know they sell to Trader Joes and Whole Foods at the very least so they aren't small.
My big takeaways are that certain categories of food kept coming up, namely premade foods like dips, pre-washed greens, and a handful of other ready-to-eat foods. That and there is a huge volume of these recalls, showing that there are issues with a number of manufacturers, but also that the system meant to surveil and recall generally works better than this recent cyclospora outbreak.
by EA-3167