By The Editorial Board
A lot has happened since we left campus last spring: America turned 250 years old, Europeans discovered Buc-ee’s during the FIFA World Cup and the largest known outbreak of Cyclospora ever was recorded in the U.S., leading to over 15,000 confirmed cases from May 1 to Aug. 17.
To put the circumstances in perspective, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported just 1,180 cases in the same timeframe last year.
When examining an outbreak of this caliber and severity, it is important first to understand the underlying factors that led to it. In April 2025, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reported that the Department of Health and Human Services planned to cut 20% of the Food and Drug Administration’s workforce.
This announcement came after the “indiscriminate” dismissal of 89 employees from FDA’s Human Foods Program, along with the termination of “170 FDA staff from the Office of Inspections and Investigations,” the arm of the agency directly responsible for preventing food borne illness outbreaks like Cyclospora.
Based on these terminations and other cuts made to the FDA, former FDA commissioner Robert Califf posted “[t]he FDA as we’ve known it is finished.”
Later that month, NPR reported that “the Trump administration also abruptly shuttered two of the FDA’s seven food testing labs in San Francisco and Chicago.” Those labs have since reopened, but their closure signaled a larger problem within the federal government and food safety practices.
The events that followed through the rest of 2025 included more cuts, facility closures and policy changes, making it progressively more difficult for the proper authorities to regulate the quality and safety of both domestically and internationally cultivated food.
On July 17, Taylor Farms in Mexico initiated a recall of its iceberg lettuce produced in Central Mexico. That incident is still being investigated by the CDC and, as of Monday, is responsible for almost 11,000 cases of Cyclospora, 454 hospitalizations and two deaths.
At this point, all contaminated iceberg lettuce from the initial Taylor Farms outbreak is well past its expiration date and should be removed from store shelves; however, the list of contaminated foods has grown since the initial Taylor outbreak.
The FDA’s Investigations of Foodborne Illness Outbreaks webpage reports seven active investigations into Cyclospora-contaminated foods. Of those seven active investigations, six have products that are “not yet identified,” and the remaining investigation identified iceberg lettuce as a contaminated product, with an ongoing advisory.
All this to say that we, as Americans, are reaping the direct results of significant, indiscriminate cuts to the FDA and CDC.
We on The Editorial Board love an accountable, well-ordered and transparent government at every level; however, in this instance, we have observed the opposite.
Instead of bringing order and accountability to federal programs and agencies that need it, the federal government chose to cut programs that exponentially affect us, the American people.
Humans arguably need four things to survive: air, water, shelter and food. As a result of the CDC and FDA cuts, we are now uncertain about the food in our grocery stores, and that is a clear issue.
After months of understaffed and underfunded investigations, the government and its agencies finally appear to be working together to reduce and eventually eliminate the current Cyclospora outbreak. Until then, mitigate your damages by avoiding announced contaminated foods, washing produce before consumption and monitoring your health symptoms.
