One of the greatest lies in politics is that anyone who opposes excessive government regulation must therefore oppose government enforcement. Those are two entirely different issues. I have always argued that government has expanded into areas where it has no constitutional business while simultaneously abandoning the few responsibilities that actually justify its existence. Protecting the integrity of the nation’s food supply is one of those responsibilities. If Washington cannot ensure that Americans can buy a head of lettuce without wondering if it will send them to the hospital, then what exactly are taxpayers funding?
CNBC reported that the FDA has now withdrawn its earlier statement claiming that Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce tested positive for Cyclospora, calling the result a false positive after additional testing. Yet the outbreak itself remains very real. Dozens of people have been hospitalized across multiple states, and the FDA still cannot identify with certainty where the contamination originated. The government now admits the laboratory result was wrong while simultaneously telling the public that the investigation continues because people unquestionably became sick.
That explanation should not reassure anyone. The only reason Americans even know there was a problem is because Taco Bell voluntarily disclosed that it had removed onions and lettuce supplied through one of its vendors after cooperating with investigators. Had the restaurant remained silent, would the public have ever known there was a nationwide outbreak? That is becoming the far more important question because the FDA still refuses to identify the supplier at the center of the investigation while insisting there is no confirmed contaminated product.
Immediately, the political blame game began. The usual crowd declared this was the fault of DOGE, spending cuts, or President Trump. That argument collapses the moment anyone bothers looking at history instead of cable television.
Food safety failures have become routine for decades under both political parties. In 2024, onions traced to Taylor Farms were linked to the McDonald’s E. coli outbreak that killed one person and sickened well over one hundred others. Years before that, Taylor Farms products were associated with another Cyclospora outbreak involving packaged salad mixes. Boar’s Head became the center of a deadly Listeria outbreak after federal inspectors documented repeated sanitation failures. None of those disasters occurred because of DOGE. None occurred because Donald Trump supposedly weakened food inspections. They happened while the federal bureaucracy was larger than ever and while agencies continued asking Congress for more money.
Washington never seems to run out of money to regulate automobiles, light bulbs, washing machines, cryptocurrency, carbon emissions, or what people say online. Yet somehow, after spending trillions of dollars across the federal government, it cannot consistently perform one of the few legitimate functions assigned to it—ensuring the nation’s food is safe.
America’s food supply has become extraordinarily concentrated. A remarkably small number of agricultural conglomerates now produce, process, package, and distribute much of the nation’s fresh produce. Taylor Farms has grown into one of the largest fresh-cut produce companies in North America, processing millions of pounds of vegetables every week for restaurant chains, schools, hospitals, supermarkets, and institutional buyers. Fresh Express, Dole, Fresh Del Monte, Church Brothers Farms, and a handful of other corporations dominate much of the remaining packaged produce market.
On the distribution side sits Sysco, the largest food-service distributor in North America, supplying hundreds of thousands of restaurants, hospitals, schools, hotels, and institutional kitchens every single day. When so much of the food chain flows through so few corporate pipelines, one failure can spread contaminated products across dozens of states before anyone even realizes something has gone wrong.
That concentration has quietly created a system where a handful of corporations effectively control enormous portions of what Americans eat. We are constantly told that monopolies are dangerous when discussing technology companies, yet almost nobody in Washington wants to discuss the consolidation of agriculture and food distribution. It has reached the point where millions of people may unknowingly consume products originating from the same processors, packed in the same facilities, and distributed through the same supply networks. One mistake becomes national almost overnight.
This is where the corruption begins to reveal itself. Whenever one of these giants finds itself connected to another outbreak, regulators suddenly become cautious with names, cautious with announcements, and cautious with assigning responsibility. They speak in vague language about “suppliers” and “traceback investigations” while refusing to tell consumers exactly who produced the food sitting in their refrigerators. If a small family farm repeatedly poisoned customers, it would likely be shut down permanently. When multinational food conglomerates become associated with repeated investigations, everyone suddenly worries about protecting brands, protecting markets, and protecting investor confidence instead of protecting the public. That is corporate protectionism hiding behind government bureaucracy.
People often misunderstand my criticism of regulation. I do not believe Washington needs another hundred thousand pages of rules written by bureaucrats who have never planted a crop or worked inside a processing facility. The laws already exist. Sanitation standards already exist. Inspection authority already exists. The problem is that enforcement has become selective while bureaucracies increasingly serve the industries they regulate instead of the public they are supposed to protect. Government grows larger every year, but accountability somehow grows smaller.
The FDA now tells Americans that the original laboratory finding was incorrect while simultaneously admitting that the outbreak remains unresolved. Somebody knows far more than the public has been told. Yet instead of complete transparency, Americans receive carefully worded press releases. That should concern everyone regardless of political affiliation.
Washington has built an empire regulating every corner of American life while repeatedly failing at the few responsibilities that actually matter. Until regulators stop protecting politically connected corporations and start holding the largest players to exactly the same standards as everyone else, these outbreaks will continue, public confidence will continue to collapse, and Americans will continue paying the price every time they sit down for what should have been an ordinary meal.