“I’m still fatigued,” said Mallard. “Like, I’m really, really weak.”<\/p>\n
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Cyclosporiasis is an intestinal illness caused by a microscopic parasite, cyclospora.<\/p>\n
CDC<\/p>\n
The FDA believes that the biggest outbreak this season, the one affecting nine states so far<\/a>, came to us aboard contaminated iceberg lettuce from Mexico. That lettuce was shipped nationwide by Taylor Farms<\/a>, a huge distributor that supplies thousands of groceries and restaurants.<\/p>\n “We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Susan Mayne, an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Public Health, who ran the food-safety department of the Food and Drug Administration from 2015 to 2023. “This is just an astonishingly large outbreak, record-setting outbreak.”<\/p>\n Cyclospora comes from human feces. How could that get on the lettuce? “It could be inadequate bathroom facilities, inadequate hand-washing facilities,” said Mayne. “Somehow that water is getting contaminated from some other source \u2013 sewage, some other source.”<\/p>\n Almost half of all food-borne illnesses comes from fruits and vegetables, in part because we usually don’t cook them before eating. These outbreaks are also financially devastating \u2013 to farmers, suppliers, and restaurants.\u00a0<\/p>\n And so, after a 2006 spinach contamination, when the FDA warned against eating spinach<\/a>, nearly every grower of spinach in the country was affected. The West Coast farming industry resolved to self-regulate.<\/p>\n And so, the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement (LGMA) was born \u2013 a coalition of farmers who have agreed to adopt food-safety protocols more stringent than the government’s. “They join voluntarily, but once they join, they must follow our rules,” said LGMA’s CEO Tim York. <\/p>\n Jack Vessey, a fourth-generation produce farmer in southern California, said, “We have to do it. Any kind of outbreak is detrimental to our industry.”<\/p>\n Vessey’s operation abides by the LGMA rules, which require sanitizing the irrigation water; testing it at the source and at the spraying end; hair nets and gloves; knife disinfectant; state inspections at least three times a year; and barcodes for tracing produce back to their original fields.<\/p>\n Farms participating in the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement operate under food-safety rules that are more stringent than the government’s.<\/p>\n CBS News<\/p>\n But despite all of these precautions, outbreaks can still happen. “Outbreaks may occur because we are growing product outdoors,” said York. “Some bacteria just occur naturally within an environment. They just exist. And so, we control as much of the ecosystem as we can.”<\/p>\n Eventually, every discussion of food safety rolls around to the government. Susan Mayne acknowledged that food safety budgets have been under-resourced for decades. <\/p>\n But during President Trump’s second term, the FDA has lost about 20 percent of its staff<\/a>; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is down 25%<\/a>. The CDC used to have 11 scientists tracking food parasites; now it’s three.<\/p>\n “We had a national advisory committee, a committee that advised FDA and USDA on how to prevent microbial contamination in food,” said Mayne. “That advisory committee was disbanded<\/a>. We used to convene meetings with our Mexican counterparts on how we can work together to improve food safety. That entire team was let go.”<\/p>\n And then there’s FoodNet<\/a>, a joint venture of the FDA, the CDC, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture that provided an early-warning surveillance program that used to track eight particularly nasty microbes. But now, it\u00a0tracks only two<\/a> \u2013 and cyclospora is not one of them.<\/p>\n For three decades, the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet), a collaboration among the CDC, FDA, USDA, and 10 state health departments, conducted surveillance for eight pathogens (including cyclospora). Since July 1, 2025, reporting on pathogens other than salmonella and e-coli has been made optional.<\/p>\n CBS News<\/p>\n![\"ca-farm-operating-under-leafy-greens-marketing-agreement.jpg](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ca-farm-operating-under-leafy-greens-marketing-agreement.jpg#.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"foodnet-tracking.jpg](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/foodnet-tracking.jpg#.jpeg\"){kind=tracking}
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