The next foodborne illness outbreak could be much worse.
That's the concern of food safety leaders across the U.S. who are raising alarms over federal cuts they say have made it harder to detect and stop the spread of foodborne illnesses, such as the recent outbreaks of Cyclospora, which has sickened thousands in dozens of states. And they're especially worried the next pathogen will be much more deadly.
Food safety in the U.S. is monitored by a piecemeal system of state and federal agencies. That network is in charge of detecting, investigating, and stopping outbreaks of foodborne illnesses. Key to the system is the CDC's FoodNet program, created after four children died from E. coli in hamburgers in the early 1990s. States participating in the program, officially called the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, contact labs to get case data that can signal when a problem is emerging.
But in President Donald Trump's second term, his administration has slashed billions of dollars in public health funding and fired thousands of workers at federal health agencies. It has also curtailed FoodNet, stopping the program's mandatory tracking of Cyclospora and five other pathogens that together kill hundreds of people in the U.S. each year.
