A record-breaking outbreak of cyclosporiasis this summer — now linked largely to contaminated iceberg lettuce grown in Mexico — has exposed weaknesses across federal, state and local food safety programs, public health experts say.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed more than 15,700 cases in the United States as of this week. Epidemiologists and long-time environmental health professionals say the response has been slowed and complicated by years of cuts to staffing and funding that undergird foodborne illness surveillance, investigation and cross-border coordination.
Bob Custard, who spent four decades working with local health departments on environmental health issues and now represents hundreds of sanitarians, describes the situation in stark terms. With fewer investigators available to conduct interviews, trace exposures and follow up on potential contamination sources, he says officials are simply unable to keep up. “It’s like we have a house, and we decided to take the smoke detectors out,” Custard says, arguing that reduced capacity leaves communities more vulnerable to recurring outbreaks.
Susan Mayne, an epidemiologist who led the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition until three years ago, says the federal response to the outbreak has been slow and that the country’s food safety architecture is currently fragmented. She and others point to personnel and program cuts that removed teams previously responsible for public communications and international crisis coordination. Those relationships, Mayne says, are crucial when an outbreak involves produce and producers in other countries.
Officials from Health and Human Services have said staff who work with foreign regulatory counterparts in the Human Foods Program have been reinstated. The FDA has also said it continues to work with federal, state and international partners and deploys personnel where they can have the greatest public health impact.
State-level impacts vary. Most state food safety and outbreak response programs rely heavily on federal grants from the FDA and CDC. Last year, the administration reduced CDC grant funding by roughly 40 percent — about $5.8 billion as of May — and states responded in different ways.
Kentucky’s health cabinet reports food safety staff reductions of 30 to 50 percent. Ohio’s public health department has said its Cyclospora response was not affected by staffing changes. Michigan, which has seen the largest caseload, successfully challenged grant cuts in court and says surveillance, investigation and public messaging continue for now.
In West Virginia, Custard and local officials say shortages are acute. He recalls a county that once employed four full-time sanitarians and a dedicated epidemiologist; now those roles have been pared back. Looking at the state’s organizational chart, he estimates roughly half of food safety positions are vacant. Low pay and lack of funding have prompted lawmakers to lower educational requirements for sanitarians from a four-year degree to an associate’s degree, a move Custard criticized as insufficient for the complexity of the work.
“If you’re not getting the reporting from the local level, it doesn’t roll up to the state level and then roll up to the national level,” Custard said, summing up how gaps at the bottom of the system can erode detection and response nationwide.
Critics say the divestment in food safety capacity predates the most recent cuts. Sarah Sorscher of the Center for Science in the Public Interest calls state and local public health departments a system in crisis: delays, unclear guidance and slow problem-solving have left the public confused about what is safe to eat, she says, and prolonged uncertainty has real public health costs.
Beyond grant dollars, public health agencies have historically received technical assistance from federal labs and international aid programs that supported pathogen monitoring and laboratory science. Mayne and others note that some of that international funding and capacity-building was curtailed when U.S. foreign assistance programs were restructured, limiting access to expertise that supported domestic outbreak responses.
Former CDC laboratory leaders add another concern: staffing disruptions in lab teams that identify and genetically characterize pathogens. Dan Jernigan, who formerly led the CDC’s center for emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases before leaving the agency, says labs that once supported every Cyclospora outbreak are now stretching scarce staff and prioritizing multi-state events, leaving smaller or single-state outbreaks with less technical backup.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture also appears to have scaled back parasitology research this year. Two USDA labs that conducted Cyclospora-related work received orders asking staff to relocate to other research centers or face separation. According to laboratory staff, work in those facilities effectively halted while specialized equipment and pathogen collections were left behind. USDA stated that Cyclospora research “continues today, without disruption,” but some employees told reporters the logistics and personnel decisions have interrupted ongoing investigations.
Experts point to another policy issue that could have altered the course of this outbreak: delays in implementing a long-promised produce traceability rule. Enacted in 2011, the rule would require traceability records and batch-level identifiers for many types of produce, enabling investigators to trace contamination back to a specific field, packing facility or distribution lot within 24 hours. Mayne says if that traceability system had been in place as scheduled, investigators might have pinpointed the contaminated lettuce supply sooner and limited the number of people exposed.
Surveillance capacity has also been reduced in other ways. CDC removed Cyclospora and five other pathogens from a detailed surveillance program called FoodNet last year, a change that critics say weakens the nation’s ability to track trends in foodborne disease and measure whether prevention efforts are succeeding.
Public health leaders warn that without restored funding, staffing and technical capacity, outbreaks like this one may become more frequent, more widespread and harder to contain. Custard returns to his metaphor: removing smoke detectors doesn’t prevent fires, and it only delays detection until enough damage has already been done.
As investigators continue to work with state and international partners to trace the source of infections and issue guidance to the public, experts say rebuilding the surveillance, laboratory, and field investigation infrastructure will be essential to preventing future large-scale foodborne outbreaks.