Democrats are making the right case that the Trump Administration is gutting food safety, and the outbreak proves it. To the contrary, the crisis underscores what happens when a government deliberately stripped of resources is asked to protect its citizens.
More than 1,600 cases of the parasitic bug cyclosporiasis have been confirmed since April, with most in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. The relatively long and variable incubation period—between two days and two weeks—has made it harder to identify the source, which is precisely why a robust and well-funded tracking system is essential.
The Food and Drug Administration last week said it traced the bug to Taco Bell iceberg lettuce. The supplier, Taylor Farms, on Friday began a recall and suspended distribution of iceberg lettuce grown in central Mexico, which had also been sent to Walmart, Jack in the Box restaurants and food distributors in 27 states. On Saturday the FDA said lettuce from a batch that Taylor Farms hadn’t recalled tested positive for the bug, suggesting the problems were broader. The agency then said the test was a false positive, though it still believed Taylor Farms lettuce from the region is the culprit. So the investigation continues—and it would move faster with more funding, more lab capacity, and more staff, not less.
Democrats are right to accuse the Trump team of taking a wrecking ball to the country’s public health infrastructure, as Washington Sen. Patty Murray put it. They are also right that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made tracking cyclosporiasis harder by scaling back the agency’s FoodNet system.
The CDC established FoodNet three decades ago with state public-health departments and the FDA to track trends in food-borne illnesses over time—and a system that tracks trends is a system that catches patterns before they become outbreaks. FoodNet collects data from 10 states, none of which have been at the locus of this outbreak. That the outbreak struck elsewhere is an argument for expanding the system to cover more states, not for gutting the one that exists.
Last summer Trump officials stopped requiring these states to track bugs that are less common, including cyclosporiasis, so they could focus on the most serious culprits of food-borne illness: Salmonella and a subset of E. coli. In 2024 there were an estimated 1.38 cases of cyclosporiasis per 100,000 people, versus 17.8 for salmonella and seven for E. coli. Those 1,600 sick people are a reminder that “less common” does not mean “less important”—and that a government that stops looking for a disease will certainly stop finding it. The administration chose which bugs mattered, and the bugs it chose to ignore found 1,600 hosts.
States can continue to report information on other pathogens to FoodNet, but they are no longer required to do so. The administration cut the mandate and left the rest to chance—while contaminated lettuce from central Mexico was making its way onto the plates of Americans in 27 states. The CDC also relies on a separate reporting system for outbreak detection, but a system is only as strong as the resources behind it, and this administration has spent its tenure hollowing out those resources.
Democrats are right to complain about the government response since the Administration systematically dismantled the infrastructure that legislation passed in 2011 was designed to strengthen. That legislation vastly expanded the FDA’s remit and imposed food-safety compliance requirements on hundreds of thousands of farms and food producers—the right response to exactly this kind of contamination, and the very capacity this Administration has gutted.
The compliance costs of keeping food safe are not a burden on business; they are the cost of not poisoning your customers. Smaller producers deserve support in meeting those standards, not an Administration that tears down the standards and calls it deregulation. Food companies have incentives to ensure safety—but those incentives operate after people get sick. Taco Bell and Taylor Farms will pay a price with customers, but only after 1,600 Americans spent weeks suffering from a parasitic illness that a functioning regulatory system could have caught or contained faster. The 1,600 cases are the price of deregulation, and it is not a price the public should have to pay.
Chipotle suffered a decline in business last decade after outbreaks of food-borne illness were tied to its restaurants, though the Obama FDA and CDC couldn’t identify the precise source even with their new expanded powers. That is not an argument against food-safety regulation; it is an argument for properly funding the agencies that carry it out. A mandate without resources is an empty promise, and both parties share the blame for decades of starving the FDA and CDC of the staff, labs, and money they need. Since 2011, incidence of most food-borne illness has remained flat—because the FDA’s expanded authority under the 2011 law was never matched with the funding, staffing, and lab capacity needed to make it work. The flat line is a measure of neglect, not of the law’s failure.
The broader lesson is that a government that chooses not to protect its citizens from contaminated food isn’t lean. It’s negligent. A well-funded FDA with a clear mandate, strong tracking systems, fast lab work, and real inspection capacity could have caught contaminated lettuce from Mexico before it reached 1,600 plates. A government that strips those agencies of resources and calls it efficiency is making a choice—and 1,600 sick Americans are living with the consequences.
