--- title: There Might Be Poop on Your Cilantro description: The FDA has banned some Mexican imports canonical: https://time.com/3974244/cilantro-feces/ author: Sarah Begley article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-28T01:02:46.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:48:18.433Z article:section: Health og:title: There Might Be Poop on Your Cilantro og:description: The FDA has banned some Mexican imports og:url: https://time.com/3974244/cilantro-feces/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt22efc66d456dcb7b/69885cb3196cf4561b0374a5/gettyimages-145095950.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5191 og:image:height: 2920 og:image:alt: 145095950 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: There Might Be Poop on Your Cilantro twitter:description: The FDA has banned some Mexican imports twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt22efc66d456dcb7b/69885cb3196cf4561b0374a5/gettyimages-145095950.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # There Might Be Poop on Your Cilantro > Sponsored content. 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Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=117a126b-5935-4dd5-a5ca-457203433d64&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Organic Taste Test [Watch (HLS stream): The Organic Taste Test](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Hq4cf9Vb.m3u8) (5:38)  _Published 2010-08-19. Food writer Josh Ozersky asks New York city chefs to sample organic and non-organic foods to see which pleases the palate more._ by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Jul 28, 2015 1:02 AM UTC  Close Up Of Cilantro, Also Known As Coriander And Chinese Parsley Close Up Of Cilantro, Also Known As Coriander And Chinese Parsley Education Images—UIG/Getty Images by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Jul 28, 2015 1:02 AM UTC Guacamole fans, beware: the FDA has [banned](http://wtop.com/health/2015/07/fda-bans-some-mexican-cilantro-after-feces-found-in-fields/) the import of some fresh cilantro from Mexico after evidence showed the crop could be tainted with human feces. Several farms in Puebla were linked to outbreaks of stomach illness in 2013 and 2014 in the U.S., the Associated Press reports. The FDA believes they may also have caused more recent outbreaks due to the presence of the cyclospora parasite. Investigators found that some farms had no toilets for employees, and discovered feces and toilet paper in the fields. The resulting ban will impact shipments from April through August in the coming years unless farms in the region can show that conditions have improved. ## Transcript >> Hi. I'm Josh Ozersky and I write Taste of America for TIME Magazine. We're doing a big feature on organic and small farm foods, and so I've gathered some of the city's top chefs and proprietors to talk about the differences between organic foods on the one hand and the regular good quality foods that you would just get in the supermarket. I'm here with George Weld, who is the chef and proprietor of a restaurant called Egg in Williamsburg. All right, so, would be good enough to cook us two fried eggs-- >> Sure. >> and show us the difference? All right. So, this is the farm egg. >> The farm. One thing you can see that's interesting is that there's two different whites. There's a thin white that goes-- that spreads out quickly and then there's a thick white, really cleared distinction between the two of them in this egg. The durability of that inner white have a lot to do with the quality of the egg. They also have a good thing to do with freshness. And now, this is the egg from the supermarket. As you can see-- >> I don't see any difference between the two whites. >> Yeah, they look like just one continuous gel. Now, the eggs cooked. There we go. Try the supermarket egg first. It's fatty tasting, which is good, I like. There's not a whole lot other flavor. It has a hint of sort of a sulfurous quality which-- >> Sulfurous quality. >> Yeah, which is a big bummer in an egg. >> This is the farm egg. >> You can tell the difference when you eat it. The absence of the sulfur flavor is the most distinguishing thing between the two of them. >> I think it's the kind of thing they always say cleanliness, pristine, purity-- >> Tastes fresh, taste clean and-- >> It's not that the farm egg has extra flavors; it's an absence off flavors. It's really what it's saying here. >> In the case of these two eggs, I would definitely-- that's how I would characterize them. >> I'm here with Amanda Cohen, who is the chef of maybe the city's most accomplished vegetarian restaurant, Dirt Candy in the East Village. Now, Amanda, this is carrots. One of them is organic and one of them is not organic and-- >> Right. >> I would like you to try them and tell me and we'll both try them and figure out if there is a difference between them or whatever. >> Okay. >> Well, let's eat the non- organic one first. >> The non- organic one. Okay. >> All right. >> Tastes like a carrot. >> Carrot. It's good though. >> Yeah. Sweet. Bitter. >> All right. Now, this is an organic carrot. All right, so I'm not making any promises. It's pretty much the same to me. >> Yes. This one was a little sweeter. >> Tastes better. The non- organic one was better. Well, there you have it. A surprise upset from the supermarket carrot. All right. I'm here with Anne Saxelby of Saxelby Cheesemongers in the Essex Street Market. And Anne is one of the leading experts on cheese here in New York. What is the deal? This organic-- Is an organic cheese and non- organic cheese-- what's the-- how does it break down? What are these objects here? >> This is a goat cheese and it's called La Petite Tommes. It pretty much just means the little cheese. >> The little cheese. >> And then the cheese that we have over here is a goat cheese as well from Blue Ledge Farm, also in Vermont but sort of in the Champlain Valley, and it's called Dunmore. >> I would like you now to give me a more visceral demonstration of the difference. >> I'll let you decide. Okay. So, first, we'll both taste the organic. >> Oh, well, you know what? It's delicious. >> Goat cheese is my favorite too. >> Okay. So, that's a very vivid dense. >> Musky. >> Musky. >> Creamy. >> Creamy. >> Goatee. >> Yes. Now, we're going to have the inorganic one. This one is much more innocuous, I find. >> But rather than attributing that flavor difference to organic versus non- organic, I would attribute that to the kind of cultures that are used to make the cheese. >> Okay. >> And the aging of the cheese. I think that even more important than the organic versus non- organic with cheese and with dairy, is knowing where it comes from. A lot of the small guys, it's just too expensive to do the organic certification. And so, you can know they're farming the same way their great grandfather did, which is certainly organic. They don't have that little-- >> That little [ unk ]. So, that's the results. Our panel of experts have tried organic or small farm foods versus their commodity counterparts and a majority of them preferred the small farm ones but not all of them. It was not a clean sweep as you might have expected. 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