paris martineau

@paris.nyc

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investigative journalist @consumerreports.org‬ • tech podcastin’ @twit.tv • previously @ The Information & Wired • @parismartineau on the other site send tips: paris@cr.org, or securely via Signal (267.797.8655) or Proton (tips@paris.nyc) 👩‍💻 paris.nyc

gizmo the cat taking up all of my desk space, expectantly
FDA is providing an update regarding the sample of lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms de Mexico which was reported positive on July 18, 2026. Due to the complexity in detection of Cyclospora, FDA laboratory experts re-reviewed the sample results and have concluded that the finding does not represent true amplification and should be considered a false positive. Information about the sample has been removed from the July 18, 2026, update below. FDA has notified Taylor Farms and continues working with the firm to ensure product implicated in this outbreak has been removed from the market. FDA and state partners continue to collect and analyze product samples. As of July 19, 2026, there are no confirmed positive sample results for product testing for Cyclospora.
A sample of shredded iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms de Mexico has tested positive for Cyclospora. This sample was collected during targeted import surveillance as a result of this outbreak investigation. Taylor Farms has confirmed that this positive product is not part of their current recall. They are currently working to identify whether any part of this implicated lot is available in commerce or in consumers homes. The positive lot is currently detained and more information will be provided as it becomes available.
Fast food restaurant chain Jack in the Box also received the implicated shredded lettuce, which was used at Jack in the Box locations in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, a spokesperson told CR. “We learned of the potential issue on Thursday, prior to the FDA’s announcement, and immediately notified restaurants that received shredded iceberg lettuce through our Texas distribution center to remove the product,” said Jack in the Box spokesperson Casey Middleton. “At this time, there have been no known illnesses associated with food served at Jack in the Box from these locations in connection with the FDA’s ongoing investigation.” The recall notices posted by Taylor Farms and the FDA are notably sparse on the essential details consumers need to easily identify affected products. The recall notice does not list the full brand names of the implicated products, and instead lists only what appear to be the abbreviations used internally by Taylor Farms to identify brands. Walmart’s Marketside house brand, for instance, was listed as “MKTSD” and Sysco, the U.S.’s largest food distributor, was listed as “SY.” Jack in the Box was listed as “JB.” All three companies confirmed that their products were part of the recall after being contacted by Consumer Reports. CR is working to confirm the identities of the five additional brands whose names are abbreviated in the recall notice. Taylor Farms did not immediately respond to CR’s questions about the identity of these brands.
Fast food restaurant chain Jack in the Box also received the implicated shredded lettuce, which was used at Jack in the Box locations in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, a spokesperson told CR. “We learned of the potential issue on Thursday, prior to the FDA’s announcement, and immediately notified restaurants that received shredded iceberg lettuce through our Texas distribution center to remove the product,” said Jack in the Box spokesperson Casey Middleton. “At this time, there have been no known illnesses associated with food served at Jack in the Box from these locations in connection with the FDA’s ongoing investigation.” The recall notices posted by Taylor Farms and the FDA are notably sparse on the essential details consumers need to easily identify affected products. The recall notice does not list the full brand names of the implicated products, and instead lists only what appear to be the abbreviations used internally by Taylor Farms to identify brands. Walmart’s Marketside house brand, for instance, was listed as “MKTSD” and Sysco, the U.S.’s largest food distributor, was listed as “SY.” Jack in the Box was listed as “JB.” All three companies confirmed that their products were part of the recall after being contacted by Consumer Reports. CR is working to confirm the identities of the five additional brands whose names are abbreviated in the recall notice. Taylor Farms did not immediately respond to CR’s questions about the identity of these brands.
Taylor Fresh Foods statement from Friday 07/17/26
A map of the 27 states impacted by the recall: AL, AR, CT, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, MI, MO, MS, NC, NH, NJ, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, and WI.
Given the lack of details, CR’s food safety experts advise consumers in the 27 states where Taylor Farms’ products were distributed to discard all iceberg lettuce out of an abundance of caution. Most of the implicated lettuce appears to have been sent to food service distributors, according to additional detail included only in the FDA’s version of the recall notice. A spokesperson for Sysco said that the distributor had “already withdrawn all impacted products from Mexico,” but did not immediately respond to questions about where the implicated lettuce was served or sold prior to the recall, or if Sysco distributed the lettuce to additional states after receiving the product from Taylor Farms.
The recalled iceberg lettuce products were sent to Walmart stores and major foodservice distributors, including Sysco, in 27 states between June 29 and July 16. The states that received the implicated lettuce, which the Food and Drug Administration said was being recalled due to possible contamination with the parasite cyclospora, include: 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. The list of implicated products includes Walmart’s house-brand Marketside, a Walmart spokesperson confirmed. The company has removed four bagged iceberg lettuce salad products from select Walmart stores in the 27 states implicated by the recall, spokesperson Rachael Simmons told CR. The removed products include 12- and 24-ounce bags of Marketside Bagged Iceberg Salad (UPC: 681131328944 and 681131328951, respectively) and 8- and 16-ounce bags of Marketside Bagged Shredded Iceberg Salad (UPC: 681131328968 and 681131532099). The products have “best by” dates ranging from July 18 to Aug. 3, 2026 Walmart’s Simmons said that “there have been no confirmed illnesses associated with these products at this time,” and that Walmart removed the products from its stores in the states listed “out of an abundance of caution” after receiving notice from its supplier. “Customers who purchased these products should not consume them and should discard them or return them to their local Walmart store for a full refund,” said Simmons.
The recall notices posted by Taylor Farms and the FDA are notably sparse on the essential details consumers need to easily identify affected products. The recall notice does not list the full brand names of the implicated products, and instead lists only what appears to be the abbreviations used internally by Taylor Farms to identify brands. Walmart’s Marketside house brand, for instance, was listed as “MKTSD” and Sysco, the U.S.’s largest food distributor, was listed as “SY.” Both companies confirmed that their products were part of the recall after being contacted by Consumer Reports. CR is working to confirm the identities of the six additional brands whose names are abbreviated in the recall notice. Taylor Farms did not immediately respond to CR’s questions about the identity of these brands. Given the lack of details, CR’s food safety experts advise consumers in the 27 states where Taylor Farms’ products were distributed to discard all iceberg lettuce out of an abundance of caution.
What About People in Affected Areas? CR’s food safety experts recommend that people in the states where cyclosporiasis has been detected wash their hands and foods the best they can, and avoid pre-chopped raw fruits and vegetables. “Stay away from the pre-chopped, pre-bagged, and all the rest of that,” said Rogers. “Instead, buy them whole and chop them yourself while practicing good sanitary hygiene in your kitchen.” For those living in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky, Rogers suggests avoiding eating lettuce and other salad greens until more information is available about the source of the outbreak, given the preliminary findings in Michigan and the historical link between cyclospora infections and prepackaged leafy greens. “If I was in Michigan, I would personally avoid eating lettuce until more information became available,” he said. People in affected areas who are immunocompromised or are more susceptible to severe illness from foodborne contaminants, such as young kids and older adults, might want to take additional precautions, like eating their fruits and veggies cooked. Heating food to 158°F kills the cyclospora parasite. “I’m advising my friends and family with compromised immune systems to avoid uncooked vegetables for the time being, but I tend to err on the side of caution,” said Rogers.
Federal officials said they are not advising people to avoid any particular food at this point, and cautioned that an official source of the outbreak has not been identified yet. However, depending on where you live and your risk factors, you might want to take certain precautions with some types of fresh produce. Generally speaking, following basic food safety rules can go a long way towards protecting you. The CDC and FDA recommend that everyone wash their hands with soap and water before and after preparing raw fruits and vegetables. You should also wash fruits and vegetables (even those labeled as prewashed) thoroughly under running water before eating, and scrub firmer foods, like melons and cucumbers, with a clean produce brush. Do this before you slice into the food to avoid transferring any outside contaminants to the inside flesh. “It is important to wash fresh produce, and so I think that’s been shown to be very helpful in lowering the risk of this parasite,” Donald Prater, FDA’s Acting Deputy Commissioner for Food said in Tuesday’s press conference.
It’s important to put the current outbreak into context, as the case pattern is somewhat unusual, said Rogers. The U.S. traditionally experiences a surge in cyclospora infections during the summer months. The parasite can be found in food and water contaminated with human feces, and infections are more likely to occur in warm or rainy weather. By this time last year, at least 44 states had reported cases of cyclosporiasis, the disease caused by the cyclospora parasite, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Tuesday, CDC officials said that although cases have only been detected in at least 34 states so far this year, the total number of illnesses reported is already “much much higher than what we’ve seen last year or the year before.”
a newspaper held by mcconnell in his proof of life pic, the text is blurry, but you can make out the headline, which is from the washington post sports section
a large blue triangle in a field for some reason
a buffalo nibbling on the grass in a rich green field dotted with wildflowers; it’s shot on my fujifilm, so the image is kinda ethereal
the gator has been returned to sea and yet the bonds that tie him remain
a frankly baffling video of my father and another man dragging a gator across the lawn at top speed. the gator is lassoed (??) by the mouth with rope and each of its assailants are dressed as if they are going to different church events
screenshot of the article that has more detail about the donuts and says: Glycidyl esters Glycidyl esters are contaminants that can form when ingredients like vegetable oils are heated to high temperatures during refining, baking, or frying. Once ingested, they are almost entirely converted into glycidol, a probable human carcinogen, and scientists regard exposure to glycidyl esters as exposure to an equivalent amount of glycidol. CR and Yuka compared the amounts detected with California's cancer risk-based intake threshold for glycidol, 0.54 micrograms per day. The chart below flags products where a single serving exceeded that threshold.
“Some of what they aspire towards and want to see happen has been what the more traditional or mainstream public health advocates and academics have also been saying for years,” Krieger says. “There’s a window of opportunity that’s open right now.” Multiple bills currently before the House and Senate would require the FDA to reevaluate the safety of at least 10 substances in the food supply every three years. The push for new federal regulations comes as the agency has begun to take its first steps toward building out the sort of systemic processes it has long lacked—the kind that might have surfaced concerns about substances like BHA decades ago. Earlier this year, the FDA unveiled a legislative proposal that would require food additive manufacturers to conduct “post-market safety evaluations and reassessments” and provide the agency with additional data. It also debuted a new framework for reassessing the safety of substances currently in the food supply, and launched reevaluations of the additives BHA, BHT, and ADA. Whether the new political attention can translate into meaningful regulatory change, however, remains uncertain. Curbing the use of synthetic dyes like Red 40 has become a signature issue for the FDA under Kennedy, but the agency’s approach so far has relied entirely on voluntary industry commitments. Last April, the FDA announced an initiative to phase certain dyes out of the American food supply by the end of 2026. That deadline, which depends on manufacturers following through on their pledges rather than any regulatory enforcement, has since been extended to the end of 2027. By comparison, West Virginia’s law, which bans the sale of foods containing Red 40 and eight other additives the state has deemed harmful to health, takes effect Jan. 1, 2028, regardless of what industry chooses to do. The gap between the agency’s aspirations and reality may soon force a reckoning within the administration, Krieger says. “In the first year, it seemed like …
Four weeks ago, after years of criticism from food safety advocates, the FDA announced a new framework for reevaluating the safety of chemicals in the food supply. It also launched reassessments of two additives: azodicarbonamide (ADA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), the latter of which was among the substances we tested. The effort to bring the FDA’s oversight of food additives into the 21st century began under the Biden administration but has moved to the center of the national conversation in the second Trump administration, propelled by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement and bipartisan concerns over so-called ultraprocessed foods—a category traditionally defined by the presence of many of the very additives we analyzed. Researchers and consumer advocates describe the current momentum around such issues as unprecedented in recent political history. “We haven’t seen this type of uprising since, not exaggerating, like 1906, when they passed the Pure Food and Drug Act,” says Jennifer Pomeranz, MPH, a lawyer and associate professor who oversees New York University’s public health policy research lab. In recent years, several states have enacted legislation restricting the use of additives linked to health issues, and experts say the U.S. appears closer to addressing the issue on a federal level than ever before.
The EFSA, by contrast, is legally required to reevaluate the safety of all substances in the European food supply, and has published reassessments of more than 240 additives since 2009. This mandate is one of several key differences that experts say explains the gap between the number of additives permitted in the U.S. and Europe. The logic underlying much of European food regulation is that uncertainty about the safety of a substance is a reason to act, not to wait. The FDA generally takes an opposite view, requiring conclusive evidence of harm before restricting use. But “the law doesn’t create this burden,” says Tom Neltner, a researcher and consumer advocate who has studied the agency’s regulation of food chemicals for over a decade. “FDA’s attorneys create this burden.”
This laggard pace is far from unusual, experts say. The agency’s 2024 decision to ban the use of brominated vegetable oil in food came 54 years after it had initially concluded the substance could not be generally recognized as safe due to toxicity concerns. The following year, it revoked its authorization for Red Dye No. 3, a synthetic colorant the agency had originally concluded was unsafe 35 years prior, after studies found it caused cancer in rats. The FDA has the authority to remove from the food supply any substance that does not meet the reasonable certainty of no harm standard, experts say. But it rarely does so. The agency has “historically been very reticent to do anything where they could get sued or they can anger the food industry,” says Pomeranz, the health policy professor.
The issue dates back to the Food Additives Amendment of 1958, which was enacted in response to rising public concern over untested chemicals in the food supply. It shifted the burden of proof from the FDA to industry by declaring all additives unsafe unless manufacturers demonstrated to the agency’s satisfaction that they were reasonably certain to cause no harm. But the law did not require the FDA to revisit those determinations as the science evolved. As a result, once a substance enters the U.S. food supply, the FDA rarely reconsiders its safety. Take butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), a preservative used to keep foods containing fats from going rancid: The FDA has permitted BHA in food since 1958, when it was added to the agency’s list of substances generally recognized as safe, or GRAS. But it has never established a formal acceptable daily intake for the substance, even as new evidence of harm has emerged. After a 1986 study reported that BHA caused tumors in the forestomachs of rats, mice, and hamsters, some U.S. and European agencies took action. But not the FDA. The findings prompted the National Toxicology Program, a U.S. agency that tests chemicals of public health concern, to classify it as reasonably anticipated to be carcinogenic; California regulators to add it to their list of substances known to cause cancer; and European authorities to establish a daily intake limit. In 1990, a doctor petitioned the FDA to revoke BHA’s approval as a food additive, citing the 1986 study and others that found it caused gastrointestinal bleeding in Japanese house musk shrews and cellular changes in pigs and monkeys. Though the agency is legally required to respond to such petitions, its next move would not come for 36 years: In February, the FDA announced it was beginning a reassessment of BHA’s safety in food.
Manufacturers are theoretically required to demonstrate a reasonable certainty of no harm before introducing a new additive, but they also select the studies used to demonstrate safety and can rely on unpublished self-funded research to do so. And many elect to skip even this process by taking advantage of a giant loophole—the so-called secret GRAS route—that allows them to introduce new substances into the food supply without notifying the FDA at all. Compounding these problems is that the FDA is not required to reevaluate the safety of substances already in the food supply, including those that never underwent a formal safety review. As a result, most of the additives we tested have not been meaningfully reassessed by the FDA in decades, if at all. This is par for the course in the U.S., which operates under a regulatory framework that FDA officials have described as limited in scope, “not always prioritized towards issues of the greatest public health impact,” and ultimately “several decades behind Europeans and our Canadian counterparts.”
One-quarter contained concerning levels of additives—enough that a single serving had more than the amount some public health agencies have identified as safe for adults or children to consume daily. That tally grew to over a third when factoring in the presence of contaminants, harmful substances that can end up in food unintentionally as a result of certain manufacturing processes. And nearly two-thirds of the 40 products tested contained enough of at least one additive to exceed a broader group of reference levels associated with an increased risk of developing cancer, heart disease, or diabetes. Some exceeded thresholds by sizable margins. A single serving of Hostess Donettes Powdered Mini Donuts contained nearly 19 times the amount of a carcinogenic contaminant that public health officials have said is safe to consume daily. The amount in a serving of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies was over nine times that same threshold, which is designed to reduce lifetime cancer risk. Those two products were also among the four we tested that contained titanium dioxide, a synthetic pigment banned as a food additive in Europe over its potential to induce breaks in DNA strands and cause chromosomal damage. The Hostess Donettes contained 261 mg of titanium dioxide per serving—over 760 times the amount detected in the other three products combined. Several popular children’s snacks also had levels of additives or contaminants that exceeded safe daily intake levels, some by five times or more. Notably, Crunchy Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Gushers, Fruit Roll-Ups, Takis Fuego, and grape-flavored liquid Kool-Aid all contained elevated amounts of substances associated with either neurobehavioral issues or DNA damage at certain levels of exposure.
graphic of the hostess donettes powdered mini donuts that says: Hostess With The Mostest A serving of Hostess Donettes contained 261 milligrams of titanium dioxide, over 760 times the amount detected in the other three products we tested combined. Titanium dioxide is banned in the EU over its potential to break DNA strands and cause chromosomal damage.
me texting sports reporter extraordinaire sara germano: "what's the deal with the ref with the crazy eyebrows" "why does he hate the city of new york" sara (very kind despite me texting her like an alien that cannot use google): "paris you are already an elite basketball fan" "that's tony brothers"
gizmo the cat standing in front of my computer monitor defiantly yet also in a way that’s clear there is not a thought in her head
It's Time to Build Eggs Global institutions have dramatically underestimated demand for eggs that look like Marc Andreessen. This failure will reverberate through the rest of the decade and beyond, but it's not too late to roll up our sleeves and start fixing it. We have enemies. Our enemy is inertia. Our enemy is regulatory capture. Our enemy is that Googling "Marc Andreessen Egg" barely returns any results - a damning failure of the media that is as much a generational indictment as it is a call to action. If drawing eggs that look like Marc Andreessen were easy, we'd already be doing it. And doing it will take builders of all types: builders that use Speedrun Mode to ship 3 eggs at maximum velocity, and builders that use Creative Mode to painstakingly produce 1 egg of generational quality. As you draw eggs, ask yourself: "is this egg so good that I want to see it every time Marc posts on Twitter?" And when the answer is yes, you should contribute to the Egg Gallery - a by-founders-for-founders global registry of the best that we all have to offer. You're still early. Ship the eggs. Save the world.
it's a game called marc andressen egg game where you make an egg look like marc andressen - that's the (marc andressen egg) game
gizmo the cat in jail where she belongs
message from a colleague saying: "i knew you would love this news as a pea protein freak"