NewsMeter
The sharpest month-over-month lettuce price decline on record is now confirmed, with a cyclospora outbreak pulling consumers away from the vegetable at a pace the market had not previously absorbed.
Diners have been stepping back broadly.
The source headline captures buyer sentiment without qualification: "Nobody wants it." The demand break Cyclospora, a parasitic illness associated with contaminated produce, is the single stated cause in available reports.
Consumer avoidance at scale, applied to a perishable commodity with essentially no useful storage life, moves directly to price with no buffer. Lettuce cannot wait in a warehouse while buyer confidence recovers.
Keep reading