Frank Yiannas, a former FDA deputy commissioner, calls the current cyclospora outbreak “catastrophic,” adding that despite the large case count, this outbreak is “preventable.” As cases climb and the FDA investigates multiple clusters, he says industry leaders have asked him if regulators have the situation under control.
Distributors have already pulled the iceberg lettuce grown in central Mexico and linked to Taco Bell from store shelves, which should cause numbers from that specific cluster to drop. However, epidemiological curves indicate that additional clusters will likely emerge.
“I don’t think this outbreak is over — or outbreaks or clusters are over — and I don’t think this is under control,” he says. “It’s very likely for us to see additional food vehicles identified in the days or weeks to come.”
Misinformation Inflicts Collateral Damage on Produce Sales
A lack of official information has fueled rampant misinformation about the outbreak across social media, where backseat food safety “experts” have weighed in. Yiannas attributes this to a communication breakdown at the federal level, saying “there’s been a real lack of strong federal leadership on this.”
While cases grew in early summer, the first announcement from the FDA did not come until mid-July.
“We haven’t had anybody really stepping up to give us updates and the facts in real time,” he says. “There’s a vacuum, and a vacuum in this day and age is not a good thing.”
The lack of information from federal officials has allowed rumors to thrive, causing a severe economic fallout for growers and retailers.
“You see bag salads are down, I’m told, 30[%] to 40%,” Yiannas says. “We know that it’s not all lettuce. The outbreak that’s been identified with lettuce has been iceberg lettuce traced to central Mexico. It’s not even all lettuce from Mexico. But because of our inability to pinpoint traceability with speed and precision, it’s cast a wide net.”
Yiannas calls this “a significant milestone event in the history of produce safety,” comparing the potential commercial impact to that of the 2006 E. coli outbreak in spinach.
“When you look at the per capita consumption rates, it lasted a long period of about eight years,” he says.
Yiannas criticizes commentators telling consumers to avoid all bagged salads and greens.
“I don’t think that’s science- or evidence-based,” he says. ”There’s no reason to stop eating bag salads. I continue to eat them. I believe they’re really important to the American diet. They’re a critical source of nutrition.”
Yiannas emphasizes that leafy greens suppliers also source product from the U.S. or Canada. To drive this point home, he continues to eat leafy greens, noting he’s eaten “romaine two nights in a row, without shame and without fear.”
“On any given day there’s over a million servings of fresh leafy greens served safely, and the implicated recall associated with the Taco Bell outbreak has all been pulled,” he says. “There’s no absolute science-based and evidence-based reason to avoid bag salads. But we’re allowing this disinformation and misinformation to continue.”
Resource Cuts and Delayed Traceability Cripple Response
Yiannas acknowledges that it’s understandable for consumers and industry leaders to demand answers.
“I don’t think it’s an unfair criticism to ask, ‘Why did it take so long this year?’” he says, calling for an independent investigation into the event to hopefully prevent future outbreaks.
Yiannas says budget cuts at the state level have reduced the number of investigators.
“We’ve heard specifically from states that while they had already known it was a multistate event, they hadn’t heard from federal regulators,” he says.
Traceability, Water Standards and the Root Causes of Contamination
Calling this the summer of preventable foodborne outbreaks, Yiannas notes that while recent recalls involved produce grown in Mexico, contamination risk exists everywhere. Though historically cyclospora outbreaks have been traced to imported produce, he says “it would be naïve to think that this couldn’t happen in our country, too.”
“What if next time it’s California or Salinas or Yuma?” he adds. “This is why we need better traceability. I think we actually need to do a much better job with risk communication.”
While mainstream and social media speculate on why this outbreak spread so widely, he points to structural shifts that created a perfect storm.
First, Yiannas highlights the delayed implementation of the Food Traceability Rule (Food Safety Modernization Act Section 204), noting that missing precise traceback data leaves investigators with more questions than answers.
“I want to identify the specific ranches that it came from so that we can get down there and do a root-cause investigation,” he says.
The lot codes and data required under FSMA 204 enable FDA to isolate implicated produce and remove it from store shelves precisely. Standardized tracking data will empower the agency to conduct precise root-cause investigations.
While criticism of delayed information is a natural reaction, Yiannas puts the structural limitations in perspective: “It’s like being critical of emergency responders, but you’ve taken away GPS so they don’t know how to get to the response site fast enough.”
He highlights another major obstacle as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reduced the required surveillance in its Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) last year. CDC collaborates with FDA, USDA and select state health departments to track foodborne illnesses.
Though regulations still require CDC to report cyclospora cases, the agency transitioned from an aggressive active surveillance to passive reporting.
“What we do know is that the CDC used to report cyclospora cases on a cumulative basis on a weekly basis, and this year for some reason they did not until all heck broke loose,” Yiannas says.
Previous weekly reporting flagged early outbreak signals, which could have helped regulators catch this outbreak much sooner.
Despite research challenges, Yiannas stresses that existing knowledge is sufficient, noting, “I think we know enough right now to prevent a lot [of cyclospora outbreaks].”
First, he says growers must prioritize agricultural water quality. The Produce Traceability Initiative provides a preharvest water standard, and Yiannas encourages farming operations to execute comprehensive risk assessments.
“I’m convinced that many of the cyclospora outbreaks are because they’re using water that somehow has been contaminated with human feces,” he says. “We know humans are the host, and now they can’t use the traditional free available chlorine option because that won’t control the cyclospora, and so they might have to do something different to eliminate the source.”
Second, operations need a stronger focus on worker health and sanitation, especially in regions where cyclospora remains endemic.
“If we can prevent human illnesses, if we can eradicate it from those populations or villages or communities near farming communities, then we can eliminate the source of it as opposed to trying to control it downstream,” Yiannas says.
Finally, he urges expanded research into cyclospora biology. Because researchers have been unable to reproduce the parasite in the lab, they struggle to perform whole-genome sequencing and evaluate targeted interventions.
“Cyclospora is a fairly recent parasite and pathogen in humans,” he says. “It was discovered, believe it or not, around 1993 or 1994. It’s not one that’s been around a long time or one that we know as much of as we do some of these long-standing bacterial pathogens.”
Refusing to Accept a Seasonal ‘Cyclospora Season’
Yiannas warns that some pundits recommend consumers wash produce as a solution, calling it a “false sense of assurance.” He says that it fails to eliminate the parasite. Instead, he says, “the best course of safety for produce is prevention of contamination in the first place.”
He also rejects the idea that summer cyclospora represents an inevitable cost of doing business.
“We don’t have to accept it that it’s going to be like hurricane season, and we see hurricanes every year and we don’t do anything differently,” he says. “The reality is we do. We develop better tracking techniques for hurricanes. We strengthen building standards. I refuse to accept this as a seasonal occurrence.”
Yiannas says recent outbreaks are a “wake-up call,” much like major food safety outbreaks in the early 2000s that led to FSMA.
“There’s more that we can do and we must do,” he says. “We’re not going to solve this through regulation alone; industry is going to have to really step up.”
