The Trump Administration Is Under Scrutiny for Its Cyclosporiasis Outbreak Response

The White House said Thursday that it “has a handle on” the growing cyclosporiasis outbreak that’s giving thousands of people across the U.S. explosive diarrhea and is providing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration the “resources they need” to address it.

But as the illness spreads across the country, public health experts are pointing to what they say has been a yearslong breakdown in how the federal government responds to food safety incidents.

“Funding for food safety has not been maintained over the last several years, not just with this administration,” Thomas Moore, a professor of medicine at the University of Kansas, said during a Thursday morning briefing with reporters. Those cuts, he said, became “more acute” during the period that the White House’s cost-cutting operation DOGE was operating within the federal agencies.

Cyclosporiasis is a gastrointestinal illness caused by cyclospora, a parasite that can live on fresh foods. Past outbreaks have been linked to raspberries, cabbage, basil, cilantro, parsley, broccoli, snow peas, sugar snap peas and leafy greens, according to the CDC. Cases are seen every year; the illness is not fatal, but can be long-lasting.

The Michigan Department of Health announced this week that it believes lettuce or salad greens to be the cause of the current outbreak, which has caused over 4,000 people in Michigan alone to fall ill. The Washington Post reported Thursday that the CDC has linked the outbreak to shredded iceberg lettuce supplied to Taco Bell restaurants by Taylor Farms, according to two unnamed sources. The CDC has not officially announced any identified causes of the outbreak and did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NOTUS. Taco Bell and Taylor Farms also did not respond to requests for comment.

In a Tuesday briefing hosted by the CDC, health officials said they were working to determine the cause of the ongoing outbreak, which has been most severe in Michigan and Ohio. Donald Prater, the FDA acting deputy commissioner for food, said in the briefing that the agencies were working with local partners.

“We are aware of the signal for lettuce, and that’s being noted by our Michigan partners,” Prater said. “What I can say at this point is that we’re continuing our traceback investigation on multiple produce items, including the lettuce.”

The FDA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Jeanne Marrazzo, CEO of the Infectious Disease Society of America, said on Thursday that the Michigan state health department has offered “fantastic resources” for clinicians and “great tracking” of current cases.

“This is an example of where strong state health departments can make a huge difference, both in educating people and also leading the investigation of what’s going on,” Marrazzo said.

In contrast, Marrazzo said it was “somewhat surprising” that the CDC only released an alert on its Health Alert Network this week, well into the outbreak.

“That is an unusual delay, and I think we don’t know why, honestly. We can only conjecture, I think, in why the CDC was so late in getting that out,” Marrazzo said.

Health experts expressed concern that long-running cuts to the federal health agencies may be hampering the response to the outbreak from all sides.

For example, the CDC program FoodNet, which tracks long-term disease trends including those of cyclosporiasis, was scaled back due to lack of funding that predated Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the current administration, a former health official told The Washington Post.

Moore said regardless of the timing of the cuts, the lack of long-term investment in food safety has hampered the current response.

“When you’re trying to fight an outbreak with one hand tied behind your back, it makes it very difficult,” Moore said.

So far, Trump administration officials have maintained that the U.S. food supply is still safe. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said at an event Wednesday, when asked about the outbreak, that consumers just have to be more “diligent” about washing their fruits and vegetables.

Rollins also went on to clarify that this current outbreak, however, “is an FDA issue, not USDA.”

Rollins is technically correct; the FDA oversees the regulation and safety of fresh produce for human consumption in the U.S. while the USDA regulates meat and poultry.

Investigating the cause of the outbreak is generally a joint effort between state and local health departments — who often act as the “boots on the ground” and are first to respond to an outbreak — and the FDA and CDC. Sandra Eskin, the former USDA undersecretary for food safety, told NOTUS, “We need to get the data here and find out what was the source of the contamination, and then figure out how to prevent it.”

“There’s going to be a lot of work that’s going to need to be done once they’ve identified the food or foods,” Eskin added.

The ongoing outbreak came up during the Senate confirmation hearing of Erica Schwartz, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as CDC director. The agency has been without a permanent director since last summer.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) asked Schwartz if she believed it was the role of the federal government to track outbreaks like cyclosporiasis.

“I absolutely believe one of the core missions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is tracking outbreaks domestically and also internationally,” Schwartz said.