Thousands are sick.
Stomach cramps. Fatigue. The worst diarrhea. It’s Cyclospora. And right now? No one knows exactly where it’s coming from.
Michigan has hit 2,600 confirmed cases. Thirty-plus states report illnesses. The source? Gone. Or just hiding.
Craig Hedberg at the University of Minnesota is tired of the silence. Not that the secrecy is new. Officials hold back on potential sources while investigations run—it prevents tip-offs, helps tracing.
“It is necessary to provide opportunities to track possible sources of contamination.”
But this time the silence feels louder. Why? Because the team doing the tracking has shrunk.
Barbara Kowalcyk, from George Washington University, puts it bluntly.
Have funding cuts slowed us down? Yes.
Staffing drops mean fewer interviews with sick patients. Patients forget what they ate weeks ago. Food spoils before testing happens. Time evaporates.
“You start taking pieces out of your puzzle. It’s harder to see the whole picture. We’ve done exactly that.”
The Data Gap
Enter FoodNet.
Launched in 1996. A collaboration between the CDC. USDA. FDA. State health departments. Its job: watch foodborne illness trends. Count the cases. Predict the next big thing.
Then came 2025. Changes.
The CDC narrowed its net. They stopped actively watching eight specific pathogens. Cyclospora was on that list. Now only monitored if a state decides to report it.
Experts worried. Fewer eyes on the field means slower response times. But caution is needed here. Hedberg pushes back on the blame game.
FoodNet wasn’t built to find outbreaks anyway. It monitors trends in selected areas. The current Cyclospora wave hit non-FoodNet states. So FoodNet wouldn’t have seen it coming.
Technically.
Hedberg notes Cyclospora is still a “nationally reportable disease.” States should send data to the NNDSS (Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System). The CDC should see the spike. They should act.
But the system is lagging.
The CDC’s published case count sits at 843. Last updated July 10.
Real-life count in Michigan? 2,600.
“National counts frequently lag. Delays in confirming, forwarding, processing.”
Frustrating for scientists. Frustrating for the public. It leaves people in the dark.
Science Gets Harder
Even if we had the staff, and the data—it’s still hard.
Cyclospora isn’t E. coli. It hides. The incubation period is long. Days. Weeks. You eat bad berries on Monday. Get sick on Friday. You’ve forgotten Monday’s salad. You blamed the taco.
Wrong lead. Wrong source.
Add restaurants into the mix. Ingredients get mixed. A spinach mix here. A pre-washed salad there. Disentangling one bad ingredient from a dozen others?
“It is challenging.”
Multiple contamination sources possible? Maybe. One batch? Also possible. The list of suspects grows wider the more you dig.
The CDC hasn’t commented on these delays. Or the cuts.
The puzzle remains scattered on the floor. We’re missing pieces we chose to throw away. Now we stare at a map that doesn’t make sense and hope the sick stop getting sicker while we figure it out.
