The FDA issued a correction Saturday after announcing that Taylor Farms shredded iceberg lettuce tested positive for cyclospora. False positive. The parasite was not there. The agency scared the entire supply chain because someone f*cked up a test.
Taylor Farms now gets to explain to every grocery chain in America that their lettuce is fine, actually, and please keep buying it. Nothing builds brand confidence like federal regulators announcing you're selling parasites and then saying nevermind, our bad. Stock analysts are presumably updating their models to include a new line item called "reputational damage from incompetent government testing."
Cyclospora causes diarrhea for weeks. The FDA thought they found it in a bag of shredded lettuce destined for salads and tacos. They did not find it. They found whatever shows up when you run a test wrong. Could have been anything. Could have been nothing. Could have been the lab tech's lunch contaminating the sample.
Retail traders who panic-sold their portfolios of agricultural ETFs after the first announcement are now learning an important lesson about reacting to headlines before the facts settle. That lesson is: you will lose money in ways you cannot predict or defend against, and sometimes the reason will be that a federal agency announced something false and then retracted it 24 hours later while you were already out of the position.
Taylor Farms did nothing wrong. They grew lettuce, shredded it, bagged it, shipped it. Then the FDA said it was poison. Then the FDA said it was not poison. The company's crisis management team earned their salary this weekend, and somewhere a lawyer is drafting a very polite letter asking how the f*ck this happened.
The market opens Monday, and iceberg lettuce futures remain as thrilling as ever.
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