The Government Stopped Tracking Cyclospora. Now, More Than 6,000 People Are Sick.

More than 6,500 people in Michigan have been sickened (and at least 100 hospitalized) by cyclospora, a microscopic parasite that’s transmitted by infected food as of Tuesday, July 21. The parasite causes days of explosive diarrhea, nausea, and fatigue, but the outbreak is not limited to Michigan: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it has confirmed over 1,600 cases across the country and suspects upward of 5,100 more. That’s up from 843 in just 10 days. Cyclosporiasis is difficult to contain under the best of circumstances, says Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. “And this is definitely not the best of circumstances.” The case counts are growing daily, and the country is on track to have more this year than any previous year. Budget and staffing cuts from the Trump administration have made it harder to respond to the outbreak and get it under control, just as other moves have stymied the response to screwworm, another food safety crisis also gripping the country. Together, they expose what can happen when federal food safety infrastructure is defunded and stripped away. Silencing the Early Warning System The warning signs of the cyclospora outbreak likely took longer to show up after the CDC made the tracking of the parasite optional in 2025 on its Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network. FoodNet, as it’s known, is “an ongoing surveillance system, it’s like sentinel surveillance,” Wallace says. The Trump administration has also laid off thousands of food safety workers. The Food and Drug Administration lost over 4,000 employees in recent months, including those working on food safety and scientists testing for bacteria in food. Wired reports that the CDC lost nearly 3,000 jobs since January 2025, including 913 from the Food Safety Inspection Service. FoodNet research sites around the country used to watch cyclospora, along with other pathogens, and when they saw a blip, it could indicate an outbreak. That would prompt health officials and media outlets to start warning the public to wash and cook vegetables so they could avoid getting sick. “We don’t have that early warning system,” Wallace says. “We had no clue, and then all of a sudden people were getting sick.” On July 17, the CDC and FDA said that iceberg lettuce sold to Taco Bell stores in a handful of states was almost certainly a source of the outbreak. (Taco Bell pulled some suspect ingredients from its stores before health officials investigated potential links to the outbreak.) There are quite likely other sources given that the FDA and CDC said it was just a subset; Taylor Farms, a supplier of Taco Bell’s lettuce, has begun a voluntary recall. “It is almost certainly not the whole story,” Wallace cautions. In fact, historically, the norm for cyclospora is to have multiple sources at once, she says. But private companies aren’t always incentivized to share information with the public on their own or to take costly actions without government intervention. To narrow down the outbreak sources, the federal government should “connect the dots around the country,” taking data from Michigan and other places and filling in the gaps, Wallace says, but “that’s what’s been cut.” “A state can come up with a hypothesis,” Wallace adds. But tracing the parasite in other states and connecting it to actual foods “is national work.” The fact that the CDC’s numbers don’t match up with Michigan’s is concerning. “The CDC should be the most updated, but it’s not.” In addition to staffing cutbacks, the administration also rolled back the congressionally approved implementation of the Food Traceability Rule. The rule would require food manufacturers and processors to retain lot-level information so that outbreak investigators can quickly trace what people ate back to specific products. It was supposed to go into effect in January of this year, but last summer the FDA proposed extending that date by 30 months, pushing it to 2028, which Congress then ratified. “That would at least [have given] us an idea of how we can connect it to cases in other states,” Wallace says. “This is another missed opportunity.” None of these things are the sole cause of the outbreak, Wallace says. But they are “not helping.” Beyond Produce: The Threat to US Livestock The missed opportunity to catch the cyclospora outbreak is similar to those in another food-based public health emergency. The southern US is currently experiencing an outbreak of screwworm, a flesh-eating fly that attacks cattle and threatens the country’s beef supply. There have been a total of 41 cases, with 12 active as of July 19. While the roots of the outbreak are various, Trump administration actions have hampered the response. Early in 2025, the administration cut funding for the Department of Agriculture that went to animal disease control and prevention, including funding for monitoring and responding to New World screwworm in an effort to prevent it. Staffing losses at the USDA and monthslong delays in funding due to reviews by Trump administration officials interfered in other efforts, according to Politico. They held up the construction of two facilities to produce more sterile male flies, the best tool for stopping the ability of the insects to breed and spread, as well as a $100 million research initiative to create new tools to slow screwworm’s advance. “This is the result of uneducated cuts to health care, surveillance systems,” Wallace notes. And there are no signs that steps are being taken to repair the systems. “It’s not going to get any better,” she says. “This is just going to keep happening.”