In the middle of a diarrhea shitstorm, the Food and Drug Administration and lettuce supplier Taylor Farms appear to be facing off in a passive aggressive battle of technicalities.

On July 17, the California-based company issued a voluntary recall on iceberg lettuce sourced from Central Mexico. The recall came after people across at least five states were sickened with cyclosporiasis, a parasitic infection that causes explosive diarrhea.

The next day, the FDA said that it had detected the parasite in a sample of Taylor Farms lettuce that wasn’t part of the initial recall. The day after that, the company and the FDA said that the result was actually a false positive.

“Today, the FDA apologized to us,” Taylor Farms then posted on its X account on July 19.

The FDA did not quite agree with that interpretation, however. On July 20, an agency official told reporters that it did not offer the company an “official apology.” Instead, the official said, "mostly we were providing factual information" about how difficult it is to test for and trace the sources of cyclospora outbreaks.

The agency emphasized that the recall—which spans 27 states, and includes certain lettuce sold to Taco Bell and Walmart—still stands. “To clarify, this false-positive lab sample DOES NOT change the basis for FDA’s ongoing outbreak investigation or the overwhelming epidemiological data supporting the current voluntary recall by Taylor Farms,” it posted on X.

In its July 19 post, Taylor Farms also wrote that the FDA “has not identified a single positive product test result for Cyclospora.” W...