The government has no authority to order companies to withdraw food or even name the companies. They rely on persuasion. Hence the lag. Both the policy and law need to change.

FDA says the salad mix in the recent Cyclospora case is from salad served at Red Lobster & the Olive Garden, linked to a Mexican far.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/02/fda-mexico-taylor-farms-de-mexico-cyclospora-outbreak/2613871/

I think that is a terrible law and that they should have to disclose the brand. I would really like to know what it is so I could avoid it in the near future just to be safe.

Apparently there's some little known state law that if an outbreak is not active, then it is not required to make the brand/farm/etc public. Since this occurred about 1.5 months ago, for bagged lettuce that unquestionably would be bad or thrown out by now, that makes it "inactive."

Sometimes I store extra bagged spinach in the Freezer, though, to use in omelets, smoothies, etc. I don't know if this outbreak included spinach or freezable greens.

tl;dr - it sounds like some little loophole prevents them from naming names for products that are well past the date they would normally be good to eat.

Why aren't they telling the brand of bagged salad that caused the outbreak?? I thought they always disclosed this to the public.