The Food and Drug Administration had not inspected Taylor Farms de Mexico for seven years before the farm was linked to the ongoing cyclospora outbreak in the United States, a gap that now sits at the center of a broader debate over how much foreign food policing the agency can realistically do.
That gap matters because the FDA conducted just under 1,000 foreign food safety inspections in 2025, even though federal law requires nearly 20 times that many each year. Early numbers for 2026 suggest the agency is on track for a similar pace, leaving it far below a mandate it has missed for the full 10 years it has been in place. One public health expert, Meridith Seife, said FDA inspections are the first line of defense against outbreaks and warned that if the agency is not routinely visiting food facilities, it is “completely blind.”
The last FDA visit to Taylor Farms de Mexico before the outbreak came in 2019, when inspectors found no violations. Before that, the agency had been there in 2013 after another cyclosporiasis outbreak, and that review found the facility was recycling wash water for salad mix. It could not conclusively pinpoint the source of that outbreak, but the record shows the farm had already been flagged once before and then went unvisited for years. That is why the current outbreak has sharpened attention on the difference between a clean inspection report and what happens in the years that follow.
FDA officials say the inspection target required by law is unrealistic and that the agency uses a risk-based system to place its staff where they can have the greatest public health impact. Emily Hilliard said the FDA’s ability to protect the food supply cannot be measured by one inspection statistic and said the agency is working to expand staffing at foreign posts. Still, the numbers are hard to ignore: foreign food safety inspections fell 29% from 2024, last year’s total was the lowest since 2011 outside of the COVID period, and even a lower target the agency has said it needs would be nearly five times higher than last year’s count.
That leaves the FDA with a familiar problem and a fresh outbreak attached to it. About a third of foreign food inspections over the last decade found violations, and around 2% led to enforcement action, which means the agency does catch problems when it gets there. The harder question now is whether a system that has stayed this far behind the law for a decade can keep narrowing the gap before the next outbreak forces the issue again.
