Jurisprudence
July 22, 20265:50 AM
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images and joSon via Getty Images Plus.
For as common as food poisoning is—according to the Food and Drug Administration, there are approximately 48 million cases in the U.S. each year—rarely do outbreaks go viral, both literally and culturally, like Cyclospora has over the past month. One reason this outbreak has proved the exception is likely due to the pathogen’s “explosive diarrhea” side effect, and the lowbrow comedic opportunities that naturally arise. But an even bigger reason is that we continue to know relatively little about its origin. Given the state of epidemiology and data analysis, food poisoning probably shouldn’t be a monthlong mystery, and yet here we are.
Surely the decimation of federal government agencies, among them the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA, factors into why this outbreak remains a mystery. The Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, a collaborative federal-state program led by the CDC, saw its funding drastically cut by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in July 2025, when FoodNet went from surveilling eight pathogens to two, with Cyclospora joining Campylobacter, Listeria, Shigella, Vibrio, and Yersinia on the ignored pile.
