r/YouShouldKnow 5h ago

Education YSK: Taylor Farms Iceberg Lettuce is sold under many different names

Why YSK, Taylor Farms sells their iceberg lettuce to many food stores using different names and you don’t need explosive diarrhea.

Here are some of the different names and stores that sell Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce

Earthbound - Taylor Farms

365 - Whole Foods

Simple Truth - Kroger/Fred Meyer

O-Organics and Signature Select brands - Safeway/Carrs

Greenwise - Publix

Simply Nature - Aldi

Marketside - Walmart

Good and Gather - Target

H.E.B Store brand

Trader Joe’s store brand

12.1k Upvotes

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2.5k

u/b1gmouth 5h ago

Look for the prefix TF at the start of the code on the package

950

u/bt456mnuutrk 4h ago

Tegridy Farms?

559

u/bacon-is-sexy 3h ago

Tragic Farts

156

u/figbudge86 3h ago

Torrid Feces

107

u/DominionGhost 3h ago

Torrential Feculence

68

u/TheShenanegous 3h ago

Total Fecal

40

u/TheTangoFox 3h ago

Toilet Fowler

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u/[deleted] 3h ago

[deleted]

0

u/Centurion87 3h ago

Mr. Bloody Crap

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u/slayerhk47 2h ago

Mr. Beleaguers Commode

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u/Malteser23 1h ago

Total Fe-call!

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u/whichwitchwhohoots 1h ago

Best one yet, take my poor person award🏆🏆🏆

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u/cantliftmuch 3h ago

Terrible Flatulence

3

u/wakoreko 3h ago

Taylor-Like-Farms-1 is the new GLP-1 peptide

2

u/MissHillary 3h ago

Tourista flux

3

u/Tylrt 3h ago

Turd Fountaining

2

u/Birdsonme 1h ago

This one got me!

2

u/weeny-butts 3h ago

turding frequently

2

u/Medium_Promotion_891 2h ago

turbid flow 

1

u/CandidLengthiness379 18m ago

treacherous farts

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u/flirt77 2h ago

Milchick approves

5

u/Darkest_Rahl 2h ago

Thunderous flatulence

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u/top_value7293 3h ago

🤣🤣🤣

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u/eleanor61 3h ago

The nortle I nortled.

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u/WetFart-Machine 2h ago

No such thing

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u/bacon-is-sexy 2h ago

Username checks out

-3

u/toxicoke 3h ago

the fuck

17

u/minutetillmidnight 2h ago

Tegridy farms remembers.

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u/reddskittle 3h ago

Gonna sell that Recall Special 🌲

1

u/Decantus 2h ago

Ooooooh I'm in a hole...

14

u/SomniumMundus 3h ago

No, Taylor Farms. They never had tegridy tho

1

u/cellfire 3h ago

Tastes like shit. You won't care.

1

u/Timely-Group5649 2h ago

Trump's Feces

It causes Trumperhea.

1

u/BobABewy 2h ago

They took errrr jooooooorbs!

1

u/KnownNectarine5924 1h ago

Tegridy farms would never do this to us. They have Tegridy

1

u/wykah 35m ago

Tumultuous Follow-through

1

u/kanrad 23m ago

Trump Fuckers.

1

u/bacongolf432 8m ago

The spice, they’re after the spice.

0

u/parasyte_steve 3h ago

Man I wish it was just weed in the salad

445

u/madamepsychosis42 4h ago

Start with geography. FDA and CDC have told the public to avoid shredded iceberg lettuce at Taco Bell locations in five states — Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. Taylor Farms says the recalled shredded iceberg was distributed to twenty-seven: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. Twenty-two states received recalled product and have no advisory telling anyone in them anything.

Now, who has actually gone public? Two companies. Taco Bell said it completed removal of affected Taylor Farms lettuce from its restaurants on July 17 and pulled the ingredient from its supply chain nationwide. And Sysco confirmed Friday it was withdrawing all Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce from Mexico at the supplier’s request, having halted sales and distribution the day before. Reuters’ industry source says Taylor Farms called clients on Thursday — including Taco Bell’s parent Yum Brands and Sysco — and that the five-pound bags from the Guanajuato plant go to hospitals, ballparks and fast-food chains. Hospitals. Consider who eats lettuce in a hospital.

That is the entire list of companies that have said anything. Two. Meanwhile the analytics firm Placer.ai told CBS Newsthat product removals at some quick-service chains — plural — appear to be denting restaurant traffic. Somebody else is pulling lettuce and not saying so.

Which brings us to the recall notice itself, where the other customers are hiding in plain sight. The chart lists thirty-five products under eight brand codes: CV, JB, MARK, MKTSD, PK, SUB, SY and TF. Those are customer codes, and Taylor Farms knows exactly what every one of them means.

Before I go further, let me be clear about two things. What follows is inference, not confirmation, and I am showing my reasoning so anyone can check it. And being a Taylor Farms customer is not wrongdoing. Every company below bought lettuce in good faith from one of the largest produce processors in America. The question is not whether they did something wrong. The question is whether product they received reached people who are now sick, and whether the public is entitled to know that. I think the answer is obviously yes.

Start with the pattern rather than the letters. Four codes — CV, MARK, SY and TF — each carry nearly the identical broad assortment: 50/50 blend, 80/20 blend, chopped, salad mix, salad with separate bag, shred. That is what a broadline distributor or a produce cooperative buys, because it stocks the whole catalog for thousands of downstream customers. Three others — SUB, JB and PK — carry one or two items apiece, which is what a single restaurant chain buys, because a chain buys the one cut its recipe calls for. SY is confirmed as Sysco, a broadliner, and it sits squarely in the first group. The pattern holds.

That matters because the big foodservice distributors do not buy produce under their own names. They buy it under private produce labels, and those labels line up with these codes:

SY is Sysco. Confirmed by Sysco’s own announcement.

MKTSD appears to be Marketside, Walmart’s store brand. The four entries are iceberg salad in 12-ounce and 24-ouncebags and shredded lettuce in 8-ounce and 16-ounce bags, matching the Marketside line exactly, in all four sizes. Everything else on the recall is a four-by-five-pound foodservice case.

CV appears to be Cross Valley Farms, the exclusive produce label of US Foods. That would explain why its assortment mirrors Sysco’s nearly line for line — US Foods is the second-largest broadline distributor in the country.

PK appears to be Peak Fresh Produce, the produce label of Performance Food Group. Sysco, US Foods and PFG are the big three, and it would be strange for a national shredded lettuce program to reach two of them and not the third.

MARK appears to be Markon, the foodservice produce cooperative whose member distributors buy precisely this assortment under the First Crop label.

TF is Taylor Farms’ own foodservice label.

SUB appears to be Subway. It carries exactly one item on the recall — quarter-inch shredded lettuce in five-pound cases — which is the sandwich cut, and Subway is the largest buyer of shredded lettuce in the United States. A single-SKU, single-cut buying pattern is what a sandwich chain looks like on a processor’s customer list.

JB appears to be Jack in the Box. It likewise carries one item, eighth-inch fine shred, the finer cut used as a taco and burger topping rather than a sandwich filler. I will note that JB is the thinnest of these reads — Jimmy John’s or Jason’s Deli would be the other candidates a reasonable person might land on, though both would more naturally abbreviate differently.

Let me be straight about the gradient. Sysco is confirmed. Marketside, Cross Valley Farms, Peak Fresh Produce and Markon rest on private-label conventions plus a buying pattern that matches, and I would be surprised to be wrong about them. Subway and Jack in the Box rest on initials plus a cut, which is weaker, and I am telling you that rather than presenting seven findings of equal weight.

The Marketside finding deserves its own paragraph, because of what CDC told NBC News on Friday morning: shredded lettuce sold in grocery stores or served in other restaurants is not affected. Taylor Farms’ own recall notice lists consumer retail bags of shredded iceberg lettuce and iceberg salad. Both statements are in the public record this weekend and they cannot both be true. Federal officials themselves told STAT that other brands, restaurants, retailers or distribution channels could yet be tied to the outbreak. And Michigan’s chief medical executive, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, made the point plainly: a supplier that sells to restaurants may also stock grocery stores, and many people who got sick in her state said they never ate at Taco Bell.

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u/A_Wild_Nudibranch 3h ago

As someone who works in grocery (worked for years in produce), this is a fantastic breakdown. We got our produce from a combination of UNFI/Albert's and Four Seasons- all organic, and paid for the top tier. Our suppliers fortunately aren't on this list (Olivia's organics, Lady Moon, and locally sourced co-ops), but that hasn't stopped customers from being cautious.

Pisses me off, with it being peak BLT season...

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u/Gates_wupatki_zion 2h ago

Upvote for peak BLT season, but just go for green or red leaf lettuce if only iceberg is affected.

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u/mydogsnameisbuddy 2h ago

It sounds like cut or shredded lettuce is the issue so whole heads of iceberg may not be impacted?

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u/Gates_wupatki_zion 2h ago

I just don’t know why anyone wouldn’t pay an extra dollar for lettuce that is so superior and won’t destroy your o-ring.

1

u/PuzzleheadedEgg4591 1h ago

B(Lettuce sucks any, use something like spinach or sprouts)Tomato

1

u/Septopuss7 20m ago

Arugula is bangin on a BLT, especially with fresh mango and... cilantro...

1

u/PuzzleheadedEgg4591 5m ago

Agree with the cilantro and arugula, you’re about to blow my mind with the mango though.

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u/Septopuss7 3m ago

Dude. On some ciabatta? I used to run it as a brunch special and it was a huge hit. I would eat like 3 myself in one shift. I mixed the cilantro in with the mayo

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u/hi_how_are_youuu 1h ago

Butter lettuce is perfect for BLTs

3

u/Sugarisadog 1h ago

This was copy pasted from a blog written by a lawyer specializing in food safety. I don’t know if links are being deleted but marlerblog dot com is the source, it should also show up in a search if you copy paste a paragraph. 

1

u/King_Chochacho 1h ago

Time to discover the glory of the tomato furikake sandwich:

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024442-furikake-tomato-sandwich

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u/A_Wild_Nudibranch 1h ago

I have a feeding tube and severe nausea- if I take a $70 nausea pill, I might be able to eat.

I want a goddamn AMERICAN BLT, gut bugs or no!

(Not a huuuuge furikake fan, but it looks great!)

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u/[deleted] 3h ago

[deleted]

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u/ThrowRA01121 3h ago

If it's accurate info, who the fuck cares 🙄

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u/[deleted] 3h ago

[deleted]

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u/ThrowRA01121 2h ago edited 2h ago

I don't care if AI was used to organize the info into a precise and well-written comment/article. If the info is real accurate data, gathered and written by a person but organized or tweaked to he better by ai, that's not a huge deal nor a reason to completely write off the content of the comment. Your outlook is poor.

ETA: "comment reply: similarly I don't care how the fuck you feel..." (sure, Jan 🤭), love clicking the notification just to find them all deleted lol

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u/[deleted] 2h ago edited 2h ago

[deleted]

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u/badken 2h ago

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but the CDC gaslighting people by contradicting Taylor Farms' own report of what's going on is disturbing. Maybe not unexpected, given who remains at the CDC. It's being run by janitors now or something, right?

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u/Every_Damned_E 2h ago

Janitors might have taken the job more seriously

19

u/ChilledParadox 1h ago

not sure why janitors get so much hate. I was a janitor in a large factory for like a year.

nothing quite like having to clean period blood and shit stains from the walls and floors of womens bathrooms, piss and shit from under the urinal of adult men, and generally being the underappreciated backbone for all you disgusting "adults" who never learned how to use the bathroom., while these same guys shit talk you and call you retarded and generally avoid eye contact.

1

u/badken 43m ago edited 28m ago

I don't hate janitors. But janitors don't typically have the skill set needed to run the CDC. Just like the people who currently oversee the CDC.

I could have chosen any job that doesn't require workers to have a professional degree or similar extensive training. People like dishwashers, or fast-food employees, or seasonal farm workers, or ditch diggers, or supermarket clerks, or day laborers on construction sites, or customer service... "Unskilled" does not mean the jobs are unimportant. It doesn't mean the workers do not work hard or long hours. And it doesn't mean they are not intelligent or creative.

Janitors are just the first job that came to mind for someone who might already be working for the CDC.

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u/ChilledParadox 32m ago

see you say that, but part of my duties as a janitor were washing industrial pallets in solution that was so concentrated as to be slightly corrosive, and part of that detail included doing water testing through pipetting in different solutions, comparing them to data sheets, and cross referencing values to determine if the water quality was sufficient for the process.

I think a lot of janitors would do a fantastic job in a regulatory agency because they are trained on regulations, quality standards, health, and safety.

People see a janitor and act like they're all high school dropouts with sub 70 IQ.

no, cleaning floors is just another job. Some people work jobs because they have to, not because they find cleaning people's shit off walls fun and intellectually stimulating.

You do yourself a massive disservice with your bias.

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u/badken 19m ago edited 16m ago

I'm sorry if I come across as biased. I was not making a joke about janitors. I was making a dark joke about how the CDC has been gutted by the current administration. That's the story here. The CDC currently cannot perform its mission because many of the epidemiologists, microbiologists, and medical doctors were fired or otherwise encouraged to find employment elsewhere. Those people cannot be replaced by janitors despite what the current Secretary of Health and Human Services might believe.

That does not mean that janitors are unimportant or uneducated or lazy. They're not. It's certainly not a job I can do, so I respect people who can.

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u/lIlIlIIlIIIlIIIIIl 1h ago

We wish it was run by janitors, they actually know what hard work is and they work everyday to keep people safe and healthy and we don't thank them enough for it. They are as essential as people who work at farms, grocery stores, hospitals, etc. Hospitals couldn't even properly do what they do without them.

1

u/MadmanMaddox 20m ago

No, maintenance was the first wave of DOGE cuts. Also don't rag on custodial staff, that's hard work that's very unappreciated.

29

u/DrKittyLovah 3h ago

This is an excellent comment, please consider putting it as a response to the main post for more visibility.

0

u/jsm1 3h ago

You’re responding to a post clearly drafted by an LLM. The tells are phrases like “Start with the pattern rather than the letters” and “The Marketside finding deserves its own paragraph”. This is not idiomatic English writing, it’s slop.

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u/madamepsychosis42 3h ago edited 3h ago

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u/evillegaleagle 3h ago

Then the news article used AI. I agree it has classic AI "tells."

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u/PangolinOrange 3h ago

Eh. Reads like it was written by a lawyer, which it was. ZeroGPT indicates it was likely written by a human as well.

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u/evillegaleagle 3h ago

I'm a lawyer who does research on AI outputs, so I look at them all day when I'm not looking at human legal writing. The topic sentences, especially "The Marketside finding deserves its own paragraph," are classic Claude. Agree to disagree on this one.

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u/ndstumme 2h ago

Claude learned it from somewhere. Real people write like that.

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u/evillegaleagle 2h ago

Yes and no. Here's a gift link to a NYT article about it. LLMs learned language patterns from human writing, but the way they are trained (including RLHF) amplifies and exaggerates certain speech patterns in ways that are no longer "human."

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u/im-a-sock-puppet 3h ago

Why didn’t you link that in the comment? It’s also not clear if the author mislinked or not but there’s no source for the table with those different company names? It seems to make up a bunch of company product acronyms

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u/haibiji 3h ago

The table was from the Taylor farms site

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u/tenotul 3h ago

So your proof for "it's not AI" that it's been posted on a web site?! 🤣

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u/madamepsychosis42 3h ago edited 3h ago

get off my dick, i'm just sharing current, relevant health information

i tried to edit my comment to link it but got the reddit red-banner 'something went wrong' and stopped after the fifth try.

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u/DrKittyLovah 3h ago edited 3h ago

Idc what tools may have been used to write it, it has good info that isn’t available elsewhere and that is important to share. Take your suspicions elsewhere.

Edit: you need to address your personal filter on what is AI, my friend, as this is not. A quick glance at your profile showed me that as part of your hatred for it you’ve gotten super obsessed with finding it & banning it, which would normally be okay, except you are going overboard by attacking posts that are not AI. Chill, seriously.

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u/jsm1 3h ago

And to respond to your edit, my focus is on preserving organic content in an housing advice subreddit I moderate, which has been overrun by vibe code developers promoting their real estate solutions and has diluted the actual helpful content that people post.

In my line of work I literally do privacy and AI compliance. I am not full Luddite. But it’s important to call out content that appears organic but isn’t, that’s not a delusional crusade.

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u/madamepsychosis42 3h ago

Of course you'd be a mod. You act shitty and holier than thou in your comments.

In my line of work I don't give a shit about what the fuck you just said. You were quick to jump on my shit within minutes to seem superior. How does it feel? Did it work for you today?

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u/jsm1 3h ago

If it’s not available elsewhere doesn’t that raise suspicion that it’s possibly hallucinated information without citation? This is like the first rule of AI literacy…

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u/Apprehensive-Wave640 3h ago

Is it inaccurate? That's the only thing that matters in this situation.

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u/Sofa_King_Gorgeous 3h ago

Your conclusion that the post is AI is like another's conclusion that someone is lying because they looked up. 🙄

-3

u/jsm1 3h ago

Not all the claims in the post are cited, some of it is conjecture. My issue is that it is presented as if it is authoritative and gives the impression that it is, when it’s piecing together some valid guidance alongside some wild speculation.

4

u/Jomskylark 3h ago

They literally say multiple times this isn't concrete confirmation but rather their best guess.

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u/Any_Cup1627 3h ago

This provides good information regarding the issue... What's your point?

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u/jsm1 3h ago

My point is that a lot of the post is conjecture and the citations aren’t consistent. Just because something looks like it’s good info doesn’t mean it is. This is a literacy problem.

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u/Sengfroid 1h ago

Just adding in that Walmart has confirmed they were affected and had to pull bags

3

u/Desperate_Baby_8317 2h ago

I am saving this and copying it to put in the family group chat because everybody loves a salad in the summertime and unfortunately now we have to watch out for these things. I mean, you know you can buy heads of lettuce and things of that nature but you know some people are older and they want the convenience, but thank you so much for this breakdown.

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u/Bignicky9 3h ago

Saving this. Such a thorough breakdown of the Taylor Farm lettuce product recall/timeline

2

u/manachar 1h ago

Why is a comment on Reddit more informative than most journalistic pieces on this or the FDA or CDC?

What a dystopian hellhole we have made.

2

u/urlach3r 1h ago

Great info. I really don't want to yeet my intestines into the next county, so I'm just gonna avoid lettuce for awhile.

2

u/PyroIsSpai 37m ago

So in other words we’re fucked.

2

u/nothingdoing 3h ago

Farm town rumor mill says a large lettuce farm in Mexico had irrigation that got contaminated with sewage. I'm buying local US lettuce for now. 

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u/The_Pandalorian 2h ago

Why "for now" and not "forever?"

1

u/nothingdoing 2h ago

Farm stands are mostly only open on the weekends, and sometimes a guy just needs a bag of salad on a busy weeknight 🤷‍♂️

1

u/The_Pandalorian 2h ago

Yeah, but you can find bagged salads in-store that were farmed in the US... It's not all Taylor Farms/Mexico.

0

u/[deleted] 3h ago

[deleted]

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u/nothingdoing 3h ago

Oh that the source/farm has been identified, and for a while 

1

u/drowse 0m ago

Thanks for this but it makes me really angry we have to go to this level of detail to understand on Reddit when this really is the government's responsibility to police. Its not my personal responsibility to understand the supply chains of every major fast food restaurant and grocery store i shop at. Willful negligence of this administration.

1

u/This-Shape2193 56m ago

Hi Claude. Good to see you here. I guess your person can't write a comment without you. 

1

u/[deleted] 40m ago

[deleted]

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u/sanders04 3h ago

wait a second so these 8oz shredded iceberg lettuce bags i've been buying from Walmart (in NY) are potentially contaminated?! I thought I was safe but now I should plan for explosive diarrhea in a couple hours I suppose 😭

1

u/DrKittyLovah 3h ago

Sorry, but yes, and you will have to wait up to 2 weeks to know if you got it (long possible incubation period), not just a few hours.

1

u/sanders04 3h ago

shiiiiit 2 weeks?! I just KNOW it'll hit about an hour before I go on a mini vacation next weekend lol

0

u/Pappy_whack 3h ago

So this is caused by imported lettuce from Mexico then

0

u/layered_dinge 3h ago

Are y’all just unable to go without lettuce for a few weeks or what

0

u/chronicallyill_dr 2h ago

If you’re my husband, yes. Dude eats one salad a day and refuses to substitute for something else. I thought my state was safe, so I didn’t push the issue, but after reading this info I’m not so sure anymore.

0

u/whoisdallas 1h ago

It's a good comment, but I think you should (if my instincts are correct) be clear that this comment was authored, and presumably some of the analysis, was done in tandem with AI.

50

u/LevelPerception4 4h ago

The bar code?

106

u/en_sabahnur 4h ago

No. There's a manufacturer's code that has information regarding date and batch. The TF is part of that manufacturer code.

1

u/chronicallyill_dr 2h ago

Where do you usually find it on a package? What does it look like?

2

u/Pretend-Marsupial258 1h ago

Look near the expiration date, at the first letters in the code.

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u/eggowaffles 4h ago

I don't believe that's always true. I think many of the recalled products start with the letter Z followed by numbers 178 and under.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

1

u/b1gmouth 2h ago

Good to know -- thank you.

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u/AmebaLost 4h ago

Your wrong!

I think.

Maybe..

said is wife's tone

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u/res0jyyt1 3h ago

The irony of a MAGA farm buying exclusively from Mexico

3

u/Epyon214 3h ago

Goes so far beyond though. All of these brands are poisoned now.

For Publix alone, here is strike three in short order. Similar issue with Boarshead, shit quality discovered on brand which prides their self image and sales on high quality. Now with Greenwise, literal shit quality discovered on brand which prides their self image and sales on high quality. Strike three is their continued high prices and low employee pay despite making billions in profits during the pandemic lockdown period

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u/sbroll 2h ago

I actually didnt know thats how that worked, thats for the tip

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u/moving2mars 3h ago

I wish I had known this two days ago before I bought a box of greens from WF thinking it was safe. Why are they so deceptive?

2

u/Brilliant-Lecture320 2h ago

One thing that’s always annoyed me about Reddit are the number of people who feel the need to share their lame dad jokes. Anyways, on a serious note, people buying their lettuce at Whole Foods are buying the same lettuce sold at Walmart. Interesting, because people can be snobs if you tell them you shop at Walmart.

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u/[deleted] 2h ago

[deleted]

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u/Brilliant-Lecture320 2h ago

What? Are you responding to the right person? I said it’s interesting that Walmart and Whole Foods sells the same lettuce. I actually appreciated the information you were sharing, but was annoyed with everyone else responding with lame jokes about the meaning of the initials for TF.

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u/b1gmouth 1h ago

My bad, I thought you were lecturing me for making a dad joke

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u/Brilliant-Lecture320 1h ago

No problem 👍🏻

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u/DisorderlyConduct 3h ago

Taylor Fwift

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u/SunshineAlways 43m ago

In a different post, someone suggested that not all the stores have TF at the beginning of the code for these products, but it seems like a good starting place, at least, to me.

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u/Snakend 3h ago

TF products right now are probably the safest food on the market. They actually have inspectors there and are testing the food.

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u/haibiji 3h ago

Well that is plainly false. The recall notice includes product that was distributed through July 16th, with best by dates in August. Products that have been recalled are still out there. Also, they haven’t identified the exact source of the contamination yet, so even if you know your salad was not in the recall window, you have no idea if it’s “safe.” Plus, they can’t just quickly check a batch for contamination before they send it out. The process to ID cyclospora is complicated. Stop trying to give people diarrhea.