Following the cyclosporiasis outbreak, experts debate if lettuce is safe to eat or if caution is still needed.

As federal health officials continue to investigate this summer’s outbreak of cyclosporiasis that has been tied to iceberg lettuce, many people are wondering: Is it safe to eat lettuce yet? For now, the answer seems to be generally yes – with an important caveat.

Cyclospora cayetanensis is this summer’s headline, but it’s really just the latest name in a long list of pathogens: Escherichia coli (E. coli), Listeria, and Salmonella. The pathogen changes, but more often than not, lettuce is at the center of the ...

Price for the crop dropped dramatically this summer after the cyclospora outbreak caused demand to wilt

As Study Finds reported, researchers at Imperial College London and Kyomei Ltd. permanently engineered lettuce and tobacco plants to produce myoglobin — a protein linked to meat's red color, savory taste, and heme iron that absorbs more readily than the iron in many plant foods.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 12,883 people across 21 states were infected after consuming contaminated lettuce.

Lettuce prices are still wilting. The index for lettuce inflation fell a seasonally-adjusted 6.2% in August from the prior month after tumbling 16.4% in July, according to the Labor Department. The fruits and vegetables index slipped 0.