The Daily - The Cyclospora Mystery_ How Human Poop Got on So Much Lettuce

0:03Michael BarbaroFrom New York Times, I'm Michael Bilbaro. This is a Daily. So look, I had that little diarrhea bug, explosive diarrhea bug that we got. Can't even like, call me y'all going. I was sick of it and the dead dog on the side of the river man. I ain't lying to you, but no luck. I don't know where I got it from. I think it was lettuce. I'm not 100% sure.

0:27Michael Barbarowhere I got it. I would get nauseous here and there. I had a such low appetite and I'm a girl that loves to eat. On Wednesday, US health officials linked six more states to what's now the largest outbreak of cyclospora in American history, an outbreak that has contributed to at least two deaths, sickened thousands of people, and has left the rest of us increasingly scared.

0:56Michael Barbaroof salad. Today, two public health reporters who have covered the parasite, Christina Jewett and Caroline Hopkins-Lagaspi, on what we've learned about where it comes from, how it spreads so quickly, and why our food safety system seems so powerless to stop it.

1:59Michael BarbaroIt's Thursday August 6th, so we're just gonna test both of your mics real fast and Tell us what you have for breakfast. That's how we do this pistachio muffin. No iceberg not on the side not on the muffin No iceberg. Okay. Yep. No iceberg lettuce in my yogurt and granola either. Okay, and I as usual had eggs and sausage Okay, so Christina Caroline. Thank you for coming into the studio for what I admit will be a somewhat stomach-churning-at-times conversation. Glad to be here. Yeah, thank you for having me. So I just want to begin with the observation that it's genuinely surprising, at least to me, that we are still living with and talking about this outbreak because it began in June, late June, but June, and it's still somehow expanding. How can that be?

2:55Caroline Hopkins-LagaspiYeah, this really is expanding. So in a typical year, you would see about 3,000 cases of cyclospora done. But right now we're in August and federal officials are still looking at 10,000 confirmed, 12,000 possible. So you're looking at potentially 22,000 cases. Which is from your math, seven times a normal year's worth of outbreak. Yeah. But you can see why this would pile up. For one, you do your typical washing procedure at your kitchen sink, that's not going to kill the cyclospora. I mean, you can kill it by cooking it, but I mean, who's cooking their iceberg lettuce, right? And it's been on the shelf for a while. The lettuce that was potentially infected, that was good all the way out through August 3rd. So you're just now starting to see that get a little brown and mushy in the back of the fridge. So for the cases to continue popping up is really not that surprising. Fascinating.

3:53Christina JewettAnd it could take weeks after you consume something contaminated with cyclospora to start feeling symptoms. Scientists call this long incubation period. So you might not even start to have the diarrhea until a couple weeks after eating the thing. And then after that, you might not go to the doctor to get your stool sampled and tested for cyclospora for another few weeks. So this can be really a long process from when somebody...

4:17Michael Barbaroeats the contaminated thing to when they get diagnosed. And then there's even more time between that diagnosis and when a public health official would officially report the case. Got it. So there's a long tail to this. And based on what you just said, Christina, people may just be getting around to eating the lettuce that makes them sick. So this is going to be with us for a while. Yeah, this could last. Well, the reason you're both here is because you've

4:42Christina Jewettsomewhat unwillingly become authorities on this outbreak. So let's talk about how the outbreak has played out, what we've learned about its origins, and ultimately what we've learned about our food safety system in the process. So where does this outbreak begin? So this begins across the country, but mostly in the Midwest back in the beginning of the summer. People started to report severe diarrhea and stool sample testing showed that it was this parasite cyclospora. And more and more cases began to mount, which got the attention of state public health agencies, followed by the CDC. And on July 14th, the CDC officially announced it's opening an investigation into this outbreak. And this is the moment where all of us are like, it's like, like, tell us about this parasite. This is a parasite that

5:38Christina Jewettspreads through food or water. That's just I'll just say it's contaminated by human feces. So that's pretty much the only way that it spreads. At least that scientists are aware of. So somewhere somehow there's a food source that has human fecal matter on it. Somebody eats it and this parasite, it enters the body in these little pods called oocysts and they're kind of like eggs.

6:05Christina JewettThey make their way down into the intestines where they burrow into the wall of the intestine and the parasite emerges from these oocysts and starts to infect the cells that line your intestine. And so this whole process can take anywhere from a few days to two weeks as this parasite comes out of these little oocysts and begins to reproduce first, you know, just asexual reproduction.

6:32Michael Barbaroreproducing sexually so with each other and just exponentially there's more and more and more of these. I totally neglected the trigger warning that was required to have this conversation because now we're talking about sexual reproduction of a parasite in our bodies. Okay, but I need you to keep going sadly. Yes, so at that point when these cyclospora parasites have infected your intestinal walls to the degree that you can't

6:56Christina Jewettabsorb the nutrients and the fluids that you're eating and drinking. That's when you start to see this really, really bad diarrhea that people describe as explosive, debilitating. They can't go to work. They can't go to birthday parties. They're just sitting on their toilet and they're miserable. It's a very nasty parasite. And as you said, if you've somehow gotten cyclospora, you have somehow ingested remnants of human fecal matter. So

7:27Caroline Hopkins-LagaspiI'm guessing it's at this moment that the race begins to figure out how on earth that fecal matter got on food. So Christina, maybe pick up the story from there. Yeah. So this is where epidemiology comes in. You have state public health officials, local officials. They want to do a 90 minute interview with you. They want to know everything you ate weeks ago, especially fresh raw produce that maybe hasn't been washed. They want your loyalty you know, number for the grocery stores where you shop routinely. They're going through the Safeway shopping records. Yeah. And they want to know what's on your credit card and your debit card. If you ate at Taco Bell, if you ate at Subway, where you ate. And they do these interviews with dozens and dozens of people. And they're looking for commonalities. They want to create a big Venn diagram and see, you know, exactly what pops out. And where does that Venn diagram ultimately point? So

8:26Christina JewettThese interviews are tricky because few people can remember exactly what they ate for weeks. And if they do remember, they might remember, I had a taco, not I had a taco with shredded iceberg lettuce and cilantro and peppers. But with enough of these interviews, you can sort of start to tease that out. And that's how investigators landed on shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms, grown in Mexico, sold at Taco Bell. Okay.

8:55Caroline Hopkins-LagaspiI think we should focus on Taylor Farms because it seems they're the distributor of this food. But tell us everything you know about Taylor Farms. Taylor Farms is a huge company, very, very big and fresh produce. They have contract growers all around the country, outside the country in Mexico as well. And essentially they ship bags of shredded lettuce to middlemen and middlemen and middlemen and it goes out to

9:22Michael Barbarocafeterias, mom and pop restaurants, chain restaurants, all the way through the food chain. One way or another, you've probably eaten lettuce that Taylor Farms touched even if you didn't know it. Absolutely, yes. And those bags of salad mixes that you see on the grocery store shelves are washed, pre-cut lettuce. That's often from Taylor Farms as well. So the way to think of Taylor Farms is that they're getting a lot of lettuce from a lot of farms and the authorities are suspicious of, it sounds like, Mexico as the...

9:51Christina Jewettsource of this problem, what do they think, what do they suspect may have happened in Mexico? So we don't know what happened on this farm or farms in Mexico. And we honestly might never know because a lot of these outbreak cases end up as cold cases. They're never solved.

10:08Christina JewettWe can look to some of the cases that have been solved in the past as examples and sort of tease some hints out of those of what might have happened. And a lot of that points back to agricultural water. So the water that's used to irrigate the plants, to wash the lettuce, to spray it with pesticides, any of those uses of water you're distributing potentially a contaminated water source over all of the crops. But somehow that water has to be contaminated. Exactly. So that's where you go back to nearby bathroom facilities.

10:37Christina Jewettlatrines, sewage overflow, any of these explanations for how poop water essentially can get onto these plants. Yeah, yuck. Yuck is right. For example, in the late 90s, there were a series of outbreaks that they were able to trace back to some farms in Guatemala that grew raspberries. And in those cases, the leading theory was that this water source that they had used to mix with a powder pesticide to make it a liquid solution. They could spray all over the raspberries. That water source had been contaminated. And similarly in 2020, they traced an outbreak that affected iceberg lettuce and cabbage and carrots back to some farms in Florida that had been contaminated with water from a canal. Interesting. And this also means that when you're in the grocery store looking at pre-washed bags of lettuce, they're probably

11:29Christina Jewettat an even greater risk than the whole heads of lettuce. And the reason for that is that the agricultural water that could have been contaminated is being used to wash this lettuce. So, you know, you're seeing triple wash. You might think that's safer, but in reality, it's kind of ironic that bag of pre-washed lettuce might have been exposed to the contaminated poop water three times over. Right. Not what you think of when you think of washed three times. Exactly. Exposed three times. Right.

11:58Christina JewettA lot of people at this point say, well, why can't we just treat the water with chlorine or with, you know, whatever standard, but cyclospora is a really tricky bug because this parasite is really resilient and those standard techniques don't kill cyclospora. Wow. Chlorine does not kill cyclospora. Right. Does that mean that people who have this parasite are putting it into our sewage system and it's potentially spreading that way or no?

12:24Michael BarbaroWe don't have any reason to believe that that's what's happening. I mean, cyclospora does not pass from person to person. Got it. Okay. So, Christina, at a certain point, after epidemiologists have figured out this is cyclospora and they have determined that the leading suspect is Mexican farms that are used by Taylor Farms, that's when a recall comes in. Can you just describe that recall and how it worked or didn't work?

12:51Caroline Hopkins-LagaspiYeah, essentially the FDA leans on the company to do a voluntary recall. And we saw that in mid-July with Taylor Farms. But what we saw come out from Taylor Farms was a little bit confusing.

13:07Caroline Hopkins-LagaspiSo basically the supply chain of a company like Taylor Farms is sort of considered a corporate secret. I mean it's considered a trade secret because it's the company's sort of relationships with vendors and suppliers and that's something the company wants to protect. So the company put out information about what was being recalled. You see four and five pound bags of shredded lettuce. You see some 16 ounce bags and then there were a whole lot of codes. Codes.

13:37Caroline Hopkins-Lagaspicodes. Yeah. What were these codes? PK, SY, MARK, JB, CV. So my colleague Julie Cresswell in the business department, all of us really just went to try to do some detective work and figure out what are these codes. I mean, my first step was saying, Hey, Taylor Farms, what do these codes mean? Radio silence. No answer. Yeah. They don't want to say for proprietary reasons.

14:08Caroline Hopkins-LagaspiWho's getting their lettuce right right even though this is the moment when presumably the public very much wants to understand that and they don't even have to tell the FDA and They sit on top of quite a food chain I mean we did find out that you know some of the lettuce went to bag salad sold at Walmart under the market side Brand we found out that some went through Cisco, which is a pretty sophisticated kind of a middleman company that supplies college cafeterias, corporations, et cetera. Yeah, lots of different sites. So this was something that I ran by a food safety expert and she said, yeah, this is something food safety advocates have been talking about for years, saying FDA needs to have the authority to tell companies that you need to, in no uncertain terms, disclose your supply chain in the event of a recall like this. So everybody knows what's what because if you're a mom and pop restaurant and you're looking at this recall,

15:05Michael Barbaroyou might be throwing your hands up and not even know if your regional supplier has been affected by this. So because of the way Taylor Farms communicates this recall through literally coded language, you're saying a bunch of people probably wouldn't necessarily have understood that they were subject to a recall and they could be sitting on and serving these bags of potentially contaminated lettuce that Taylor Farms is recalling, but these folks wouldn't necessarily even know to take them off their shelves, not serve this lettuce. That's right. And that's how you potentially end up with a very long tail of this outbreak. And that's how you end up with people standing in the produce section of their grocery store saying, I'm not buying any lettuce. My instinct is to question how something like iceberg lettuce could ever be a trade secret for anybody because it is iceberg lettuce. But also that an exception wouldn't be made in the middle of a

16:04Caroline Hopkins-Lagaspivery dangerous foodborne illness outbreak to put aside worries about trade secrets and just tell everybody who has this lettuce. Yeah. You would hope so. You would think so. I mean, in this case, a very high-profile outbreak that has turned deadly. There was no high-powered U.S. government pressure to make them disclose that. You know, I'm looking at this recall page right now, and it's still a big list of codes. All these weeks later.

16:34Michael Barbaroall these weeks later. Well, Christina, what you're describing, I think, begins to hint at how much our entire food safety system ends up making it harder to get to the bottom of this outbreak. And we are going to talk about that in a lot more detail right after the break. We'll be right back. So, Christina and Caroline, we're going to talk now about the government systems in place that in theory might have caught this outbreak but clearly didn't. And, Christian, I want to start with you and the farms in Mexico where it's suspected this all started. Who's responsible for inspecting the conditions there? So it's the Food and Drug Administration. They inspect the food processing facilities and they have inspectors who go out all around the world.

17:40Caroline Hopkins-LagaspiAnd when you're talking about the food processing facility that this has been traced back to, it was Taylor Farms plant in northeast Mexico. The FDA actually has not set foot there since 2019. Wow. US inspectors haven't been to that facility in seven years. That's right. And you know, that's not that surprising. Why not?

18:05Caroline Hopkins-Lagaspi300,000 is the number of FDA registered international food facilities that the US government has an eye on. But they don't have that many inspectors. How many do they have? There's 450, and that's for the United States and the world. Wow. Roughly 450. Yeah, that math doesn't really add up. It really doesn't. So you're seeing facilities not getting visited for years and years.

18:32Michael BarbaroThe number of inspectors you're describing and the number of facilities that they're responsible for suggests that the US government must understand that it's not gonna catch every contamination. So what's the logic there? I mean...

18:49Caroline Hopkins-LagaspiThat's really sort of a reflection of the funding that FDA has gotten over the years from Congress. And while that funding sort of stagnated, the FDA has passed rules for food processors to follow. And they really put a lot of reliance on the companies to know their business and take care of it. Basically like, you know what you make, you know what the risks are. So test your products, be very careful and control.

19:18Michael Barbaroyour risks. That's interesting. Caroline, this reminds me of the US government's reliance on several industries to kind of self-police. And we've covered, for instance, the airline industry on the show a lot. The thinking is that airlines are deeply invested in the safety of their passengers. If there's an airline crash, it's terrible for the reputation of an airline. Obviously, it's terrible for the people who died. Everyone's incentives are aligned to keep

19:47Christina Jewettairline safety really strong. Is that basically the argument here when it comes to food suppliers? Every farmer and farm in Mexico wants food to be safe too. Right. And these farms want buyers like Taylor Farms to want to buy their lettuce. And then Taylor Farms and similar companies don't want people to get sick from their produce because that would injure their business. Right. So in that case, incentives are aligned. But

20:17Caroline Hopkins-LagaspiDo we know if any or all or some of these farms are testing for cyclospora? We really don't know right at this moment. I mean the FDA is going to be investigating this and they will issue reports that are made public but on a farm to farm level we really at this time have no idea. It is important to know that it's really hard to test for cyclospora in the environment. Why?

20:43Christina JewettSo it was described to me as a needle in the haystack scenario. So you're looking for something that might not be evenly distributed across an entire batch of lettuce. So you take a sample, that sample might not have these microscopic osis on it. The same goes for a water source. It's sort of like testing the ocean, right? If you're looking for a certain fish, it's not going to be in that necessarily in that little bit that you're testing. Right. I'm going to guess there are listeners out there thinking themselves, you know,

21:08Caroline Hopkins-LagaspiWe can test for cancer in the blood. We can send men to the moon. We can find poop in the water on a farm in Mexico. This is really where science comes into play. I mean, I've covered a number of outbreaks and sometimes there are sort of like indicator species or a certain level of fecal contamination maybe in the water that should trigger deeper testing. I mean, you have a system in this country of food safety under the umbrella of the FDA and CDC, but as much as we care about not having poop-tainted lettuce, we really don't heavily support these areas. As taxpayers. Right. Interesting. Basically, not that much energy or money is being put into this testing processing. That's right. Well, I wonder if it's possible that cyclospora isn't

22:04Michael Barbaroseen as enough of a risk to put that much energy or money into. I mean, Christina, you said these companies are told by the U.S. government, know your risks and take care of them. Caroline, is it possible that so far, cyclophoresis has not seen as one of those? Yeah. I mean, up until now, it's just really not been that big of a risk. Right. Which means that could change. We just don't know yet. Okay. So I want to turn to the larger U.S.

22:30Michael Barbaropublic health system and how it's handled this outbreak so far and how it's talked about it. I'm curious if you guys would agree with me on this, but it doesn't feel like US health officials have talked and communicated all that much about this outbreak. I can't recall a major news conference from anywhere in Washington about it. And should I have expected one? Yeah. I mean, I think we've heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at an event on a different topic say basically we have this under control.

23:00Caroline Hopkins-LagaspiWell, does that feel accurate? Does it feel accurate? Absolutely not. Yeah, and state public health officials are saying absolutely not. Hmm. So why would the secretary of health claim something's under control that's not and overall just not seem all that communicative about it? Yeah, well, he's part of an administration that's really heavily focused on deregulation. So to make this a centerpiece issue, you'd probably

23:27Christina Jewettbe looking at writing some tougher regulations, yeah. Which is perhaps not so appealing to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. right now. And what ends up happening is a lot of the burden for doing these investigations, for doing this complicated trace back, interviewing all of these people. This is falling on state and local public health departments. And that's happening in a time when they are really underfunded and they do not have the staff or capacity.

23:54Caroline Hopkins-Lagaspito do this type of work. I mean, in 2026, state health department said they received just 48% of what they asked for to monitor, detect, and respond to foodborne illness. And that's what they asked the federal government for. Right. That's what they asked for from the CDC that funds most of their work. Fascinating. And what I found in my reporting is that the Trump administration is working on a plan to actually hand off about 90% of all the food facility and farm inspections that go on in the United States

24:24Michael BarbaroOver from the FDA to the states. Wow. Yeah, so if the funding situation remains unchanged that could be a really interesting transition to watch So you're saying at the precise moment that states are already saying They're insufficiently funded to do this kind of stuff the Trump administration I'm presuming for cost-cutting purposes is planning to shift more and more of his work to the states away from the federal system. That's exactly right. Even to states that don't even really have a food safety program. I mean, tell me if I'm wrong. All of what you're describing seems to point to a food system that has a lot of risk baked into it. A system where we expect food from all over the world to show up at our grocery store, providing us with year round lettuce, strawberries, blueberries, whatever.

25:17Caroline Hopkins-LagaspiIsn't that just a system as we now have it very lightly regulated by the government where outbreaks should be expected? Or should we see what's happened here as a failure of that system? I mean, I think they are expected. I think it's to be expected. But when you have a parasite like this and you have the gross out factor on 11 I mean, I really do think that gets people's attention and it creates a moment where we can have these conversations and we should at a high level be having these conversations. About whether this is still working. Right. Whether it's funded, whether it's supported, whether it's as important really as it should be given its, you know, central place at the kitchen table with all of us and our families. Yeah.

26:08Christina JewettWe just heard on Monday that two people have officially died from cyclosporoh, which up until this point, there hadn't been any deaths. I mean, the state of Michigan where these people died did say that they had severe underlying health conditions. Even so, I mean, this has come to a point where people are really paying attention. This is dangerous. Right. When do you think, given all the factors you both described at the beginning of this conversation, this outbreak is going to end?

26:36Christina JewettFood safety epidemiologists, everybody I've talked to said they're hesitant to predict the future. But there have been some early signals that at least in Michigan, which is the epicenter of this outbreak, the rate at which new cases are increasing seems to be slowing a bit. But even after this contaminated food source is no longer in our food system, we still might see the cases go up because it takes so long to get sick.

27:05Christina JewettVery quickly, how are you both navigating lettuce right now news you can use? I'm sticking with dark leafy greens the kales the spinach I haven't heard anything about any links to those so I've been kind of a spinach gal for the last month Christina I'm with you there. I've also been on a bit of a roasted vegetable kick. I'm not gonna lie Nothing like killing everything in the pot with a little bit of heat Right

27:36Michael BarbaroThis is a strange moment for salad. Well, Caroline and Christina, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. What a race, you know, in the words of Muhammad Ali, we shook up the world. In a major victory for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, Abdul El Sayed, who campaigned on Medicare for All and ending US military aid to Israel.

28:37Michael Barbarowas declared the winner of the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan on Wednesday, narrowly beating his more moderate opponent, Congresswoman Hailey Stevens, who was backed by party leaders and major donors. We took on a machine. You're not supposed to be able to beat $70 million of outside spending. And what we showed is that the power of our many is greater than the power of their money.

29:04Michael BarbaroEl Sayed now faces former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, whom he immediately challenged to five televised debates. In an early sign of Rogers' strategy in the general election, a Republican group backing him released a commercial on Wednesday, calling El Sayed, quote, the most radical candidate in America. Today's episode was produced by Alec Stern, Eric Krupke and Diana Wynn.

29:41Michael Barbarowith help from Olivia Nel. It was edited by Paige Cowett and Liz O'Bailyn, and contains music by Dan Powell, Marianne Lozano, and Diane Wang. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Special thanks to Alice Callahan. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Balboa, see you tomorrow.