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- Hacker News
- > Taylor Farms and its CEO, Bruce Taylor, have donated millions to Republican and Trump Administration-associated political action committees (PACs) since 2025. This includes a $1 million contribution to both MAGA Inc. and a super PAC dedicated to electing House Republicans.
> ...on July 16, the same day the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced their investigation into the multistate Cyclospora outbreak, Taylor Farms executives met with White House and FDA officials
Ah, well, there it is. Good for them that they're able to get away with it. Corporate protection is bought and sold out in the open.
by baggachipz - This is a helpful industry article with clear recommendations. Many critiques on competition or consumer issues don't have such precision on their recommendations. I'd donate to them if I was in the US.by fblp
- A lot of people would be willing to take a significant pay cuts if only they could run their own businesses. But that's not an option for them. This gap isn't accounted for in calculations about economic efficiency. The system removes this option completely. Economists forget that citizens are more producers than they are consumers in terms of how they spend their time.by jongjong
- There's aspects to admire in the ability to provide consistent product to its customers, but it comes at a serious cost. With regulations continuously eroding this will only get worse.
My armchair assessment is the best way to push back is for farmers to join together into co-ops and find a middle ground between the efficiency of scale and the concerns of food safety and ethical working conditions.
by pstuart - this sounds a lot like "vote with your wallet" and then you look in 99% of the wallets and it's like, here's a few million dollars vs trillionaires.by cyanydeez
- I know this sounds crazy, but maybe we can stop eroding regulations. This obsession with 'regulations bad' is going to destroy us all.by yoyohello13
- Luckily the article includes a PDF with multiple recommendations at the end. https://farmaction.us/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Policy-Reco...by bix6
- > There's aspects to admire in the ability to provide consistent product to its customers
Today, if it was a mandate you could slap a label on every vegetable and track it back to the field it was grown.
I think most Americans would be shocked as to where their food comes from.
I suspect that a lot of Whole Foods shoppers would be a bit miffed to find out that the lettuce in their salad kit also ends up on a macdonalds burger.
Everyone is invested in maintaining the illusion. And that collision is rampant across all of food: Pepsi price fixing with Walmart, the price of beef at retail being long decoupled from wholesale / Agri Stats...
by zer00eyz - “The only social responsibility of Taylor Farms is to increase investor’s profits” Milton Friedman.
“The only social responsibility of the government is to increase campaign sponsor’s profits”
- It's worth pointing out that Milton Friedman's words are regularly taken out of context. His full quote:
> "In each of these cases, the corporate executive would be spending someone else's money for a general social interest. Insofar as his actions in accord with his 'social responsibility' reduce returns to stockholders, he is spending their money. Insofar as his actions raise the price to customers, he is spending customers' money. Insofar as his actions lower the wages of some employees, he is spending their money.
> The stockholders or the customers or the employees could separately spend their own money on the particular action if they wished to do so. The executive is exercising a distinct 'social responsibility,' rather than serving as an agent of the stockholders or the customers or the employees, only if he spends the money in a different way than they would have spent it.
> But if he does this, he is in effect imposing taxes, on the one hand, and deciding how the tax proceeds shall be spent, on the other."
His point wasn't that businesses can't act ethically or with responsibility, it's that they shouldn't act to become welfare centers and corporate philanthropies (which was a trend at the time). And I think even the most anti-capitalist person would agree that corporation acting "charitably" should be treated with a huge eye of skepticism.
by legitster - While the first made up quote is inline with what Friedman said over 45 years ago [0], I'm not seeing anything that resembles the second one? In fact, he warned against the influence that large corporations can have on the government [1].
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctr...
by strictnein - "Taylor Farms’ massive operations depend on thousands of workers who process, package, and move its produce. Its workplace safety record includes serious violations and worker complaints."
According to https://futurism.com/science-energy/diarrhea-lettuce-taylor-...
Taylor Farms is "heavily involved in modern-day forced labor."
They contract labor out from AZ Dept of Corrections for $4.75 / hr (but inmates are capped at $1.50 / hr in AZ)
Some of the incarcerated workers were here as non-citizens, detained by ICE, and only then eligible for work / slavery.
by clumsysmurf - 1) The work is voluntary, calling voluntary work forced labor is a bold faced lie. The people are being imprisoned, which is obviously not a good situation to be in. If doing that work didn't improve their lives in some way, they could not do it. Since they are voluntarily doing these jobs, presumably it makes their imprisonment better.
2) Taylor farms is paying 4.75, the government is the one paying 1/3 of the cost price to the worker.
by parineum - Is there reason to believe that outcomes would be better with many small players? Obviously the “blast radius” is bigger when it’s a big company with a huge footprint, but are incidents rarer and quality control better?
Completely anecdotal, I see lots or recalls from smaller producers I’ve never heard of, I can imagine they have less scrutiny and oversight.
by andy99 - Yes, smaller companies means there would be no monopoly and they can't bribe politician that much to prevent regulation.by cute_boi
- > Is there reason to believe that outcomes would be better with many small players?
Not only is the blast radius smaller, but small businesses are less incentivized to cut corners since serious violations pose a greater risk to their business than large businesses. Corruption is essentially legalized in America via lobbying, but only big companies can really afford to lobby and make huge campaign contributions to sway the government in their favor.
Government is meant to be a check on businesses, but that completely falls down once business is big enough to buy the government. It wouldn't surprise me if quality control at large companies is worse for the simple fact that they know who to pay off if they get caught, as Taylor Farms has here.
by CodingJeebus - I would personally like to see fines commensurate with the size of the organization.
The United States has allowed many industries to consolidate, but the fines they face when they mess up are infinitely small compared to their size.
by aNoob7000 - > Is there reason to believe that outcomes would be better with many small players?
Like.. before? When we didn't have nationwide food recalls that had seeped into nationwide fast food chains and bagged products distributed into every commercial food selling outlet, under a myriad of different names?
- As a thought experiment, there's a big difference between "3 companies share 70% of a market, while 30 companies sharing the remaining 30%", and "30 companies share the whole market, none being larger than 8%".
In the former example, there's far more pressure on the smaller companies, which is why in such a regime people expect more consistent quality from the big guys, and the smaller guys are often boutique in some way (=offering something unique in their service/product in order to be able to compete). Small guys have a hard time standing up to big guys.
On the other hand, in a regime where no one becomes that huge, like the latter example, there's still pressure, but the competition is fair, just like if all the companies were similarly big (except that you can't have that many big companies in a single industry, by proportion definitions).
Realizing this drove home why inconsistent antitrust enforcement appears to produce bad results. Because it leaves us in the state of the former example. It's also unfortunately the intermediate state of getting serious with antitrust enforcement.
by foolswisdom - A few things were made clear from this Last Week Tonight episode related to food: https://youtu.be/Za45bT41sXg
- Lobbying and specialist groups can and do hamstringing America's ability to make better, safer food at scale. This isn't about big vs small producers. It's a regulatory resourcing problem.
- The FDA / USDA split is something those groups _love_ to take advantage of to further hamstring America's food supply.
The conclusion I've come to is that this gives profit-driven-corporations or foreign adversaries an excellent way to harm America's food chain through these specialist groups.
Fixing the FDA/USDA split is probably a good idea, but it will take a political earthquake to do so, and I'm absolutely willing to vote for people who pledge to make my food both safer and more delicious.
by schainks - I think the 2 Trump administrations have shown that (multiple) political earthquakes are very possible.by hydrogen7800
- This analysis is a bit shallow. Massive GSPs grew as a solution to deal with the massive problems that come with greens sourcing.
If an individual farm has an outbreak they can (usually) source it, eliminate it from the supply chain, and switch to an alternative without any interruption to service. That also means you want as large of a geographic distribution of your farm network as possible. (I'm looking at you, Yuma Valley - a semi-regular source of e.coli outbreaks).
As a bonus, the supply chain is much more efficient at this scale. Small farms can have their salads packed in nitrogen filled bags for longer shelf life and less waste.
Fresh leafy greens are naturally just one of the toughest and most vulnerable supply chains. The disappointing answer (like in a lot of these situations) is that being bigger and more massive company is what makes the product better.
by legitster - Food is being produced at a scale, efficiency, and level of safety unheard of generations ago. One of the recommendations in this article is to buy "through farmers markets, community-supported agriculture programs, farm stands, and direct online sales." That's a fine way to get fresh food, but if you think the people selling lettuce at farmers markets or farm stands have any verified food safety or food handling expertise, they don't. And online sales? Who knows.
Food packaged and distributed by these mega-suppliers probably has less human handling through the supply chain than any other food, and they have lot numbers and sources logged for all of it, which allowed them to quickly pinpoint the farm that was the source of the Cyclospora outbreak.
There are downsides to the consolidation of food suppliers, to be sure, but food safety is probably better for it.
by SoftTalker - > allowed them to quickly pinpoint the farm that was the source of the Cyclospora outbreak.
Did they actually do this? All the reporting I saw basically amounted to “we have no friggin’ idea, shrug”. Unless you mean “Taylor Farms”, but that’s not a farm.
Edit: here’s the FDA page about it: https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/investi...
They certainly haven’t “pinpointed the farm”. In fact, they have no idea which farm might have been the source. As such, this claim is completely false:
> “they have lot numbers and sources logged for all of it, which allowed them to quickly pinpoint the farm that was the source of the Cyclospora outbreak.”
by antonvs - They also have more incentive and capability to optimize right up to (and past) safety lines. And the impersonal corporate distance from the pride in quality of production matters too.
With appropriate regulation and enforcement I agree with you, but in the current regime, I’m not surprised that foodborne illness in America has 10x in 2026.
by edmundsauto - "That's a fine way to get fresh food, but if you think the people selling lettuce at farmers markets or farm stands have any verified food safety or food handling expertise, they don't."
They most certainly do at my farmer's market, and every vendor has their certification posted for all to see, along with a health inspector rating underneath it.
by lightedman - Here's a pretty good video about the problem in general. https://youtu.be/nyG-np0S0ZQ
The jist is that a lot of this is from consolidation at all levels. There are fewer grocery stores and distributors which has ultimately made hard to know where food ultimately comes from.
Couple that with deregulation and the dismantling of the government regulatory agencies under DOGE and we get what we have.
by cogman10 - Also, I don’t think people have realized how much farmers markets now suffer from “dropshippers taking over Etsy” syndrome. Unless it’s a stand selling one or two specific things from a named farm or local producer, it’s likely you’re getting a lot of the same stuff that goes to the grocery stores, just at a markup.
Direct-from-farm delivery boxes are a better bet, at least the mainstay ones, but they’re certainly more expensive and the variety is more obviously seasonal (as you would expect).
Neither of these is a solution to nutrition at scale. It’s difficult to balance the economies of scale that consolidated distribution brings against the corruption that comes along with increased supplier leverage. Monopsony is just as pernicious as Monopoly (and they tend to feed each other, with large grocery and restaurant chains preferring large distributors).
by pixelready - There's a common pattern with other safety improvements that as safety controls improve, people simply push the envelope further. Cars get safer but then the drivers also get more confident doing things that nobody would get close to doing on an old car because it would spin out before then.
With the elevated standards of megascale agriculture you have the issue now where diseases from a lettuce farm in Mexico could affect somebody's health in NYC a month later in a way that simply wouldn't be possible in a previous era.
There's no complete solution but in this particular case it's important to remember that salads are actually pretty serious foodborne—illness vectors and they need to be heavily rinsed and ideally cleaned with a bleach or vinegar solution. It's one of the reasons that salads are traditionally on the no-eat list for pregnant women.
by AdamN - I’ve seen where a local butcher slaughters the cows for local farmers, and it’s definitely nowhere near as sanitary as the meat packing plant I wrote some software for. It’s not dirty or unsanitary by any means but he just doesn’t have the man power to wash every surface several times a day whereas the plant shuts down one line at a time to do a full daily cleaning with power washers and this foam stuff that gets into every nook and cranny and then gets washed down a central drain. My limited experience with fresh produce isn’t much better (omg the flies).by throwup238