Taylor Farms has had "an unusual number of voluntary recalls for tainted protects in the last three years," the New York Times reported.

The large vegetable producer, whose salad mix has been linked to the illness of hundreds of people in 22 states, has had three recalls in 2011 and 2012, according to the Food and Drug Administration. 

Earlier this month, Taylor Farms de Mexico halted production of its products to the United States after the pre-packaged salads were linked to Cyclospora, an infection caused by ingesting food or water containing a parasite. 

The recall of greens used at Olive Garden, Red Lobster and possibly other restaurant chains is Taylor Farm's fourth this year. 

Production for the Mexican unit resumed, with the FDA announcing they will conduct a program designed to detect Cyclospora on leafy greens and other products from its farms and processing facility. According to Reuters, the new program will include sampling products and water and monitoring of sanitary conditions.  

Since June of this year, more than 600 cases of cyclosporiasis were reported. Although not all reported cases were tied to Taylor Farms produce, this is the largest outbreak of cyclosporiasis since 1997.

"Just if you do the sheer math, our recalls relative to our size are fewer than anybody else," said Burce Taylor, Cheif Executive of Taylor Farms. He said his company sells as much as its next three largest competitors combined, according to the Times. 

Taylor Farms competitors Dole and Fresh Express each had four recalls in 2012 and one in 2011, but neither company has had to recall their products this year, according to Food and Drug Administration. 

According to the Times, Bill Marler, a lawyer who specializes in food safety litigation, said the number of recalls by Taylor is too high.  

"That's quite a number of recalls over that time period," Marler said.

Several of those recalls could have been prompted by random inspections by state health agencies under a federal program that is now defunct, the Times reported. 

Shelly Burgess, a spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration, said there is no specific number of recalls that would require greater scrutiny by the agency.

"In assessing whether a firm should be subject to increased F.D.A. scrutiny, the agency takes many risk factors into account beyond the number of recalls the firm has initiated," Burgess wrote in an e-mail, according to the Times. 

According to Taylor, many of the recalls were prompted by the company's own food safety regimen. 

"We have a protocol where we do an initial test and get an initial positive or negative and then follow that with a confirmation test that gives a positive or negative," said Taylor. "I violated that protocol, though, out of an abundance of caution, acting to recall the product before we got the final result."

Taylor is reporting the final testing has found no contamination. Taylor called the recalls an unnecessary fire drill, the Times reported. 

The FDA reported two of Taylor's recalls this year, which included their BBQ Flavored Ranch Salad with Chicken and a Black Forest ham and Swiss cheese sandwich, resulted in 700 cases. It was reported that peanuts were mistaken for pathogen. 

"Something else is going on, and I think it's probably environmental," Marler said.

Taylor has questioned whether flooding earlier this summer in the areas where the problem surfaced provided the conditions for bacterial infections. He said notices posted in Nebraska, Iowa and Texas had warned residents in flooded regions to boil their water.