More than 2,800 people across Michigan and Ohio are infected with cyclosporiasis, a parasitic illness that triggers severe watery diarrhea, appetite loss, and weight loss. Michigan alone accounts for 2,640 confirmed cases, while neighboring Ohio has reported 177.
The outbreak erupts against a backdrop of significant federal budget cuts to disease surveillance infrastructure. In March 2025, the Trump administration slashed $11.4 billion in grants to state and local health departments, with pandemic preparedness listed as the target. The cuts hit hard on the ground: Michigan's public health labs lost $5.5 million in funding.
Four months later, the administration narrowed the scope of FoodNet, a federal program that had actively tracked foodborne illness outbreaks across states since 1995. Cyclosporiasis was among the eight pathogens FoodNet monitored. Now the program covers only shiga toxin-producing E. coli and salmonella, eliminating cyclospora from its watch list.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 843 confirmed cases and 1,500 suspected cases nationwide across 31 states as of Friday. Eighty-six people have required hospitalization, and no deaths have been recorded. The CDC expects case counts to climb as investigations continue.
Identifying the source of cyclosporiasis outbreaks presents unusual challenges. The parasite carries a two-week incubation period, and disease investigators typically wait six weeks or longer before receiving confirmed case reports from labs. By the time epidemiologists interview patients, weeks have passed, making it nearly impossible for people to remember what they ate or where they shopped.
Michigan's chief medical executive, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, confirmed to the Associated Press that "there is clearly a linked outbreak happening right now," though investigators have not yet pinpointed a common source. The state health department has advised restaurants and commercial kitchens in the southeast to thoroughly wash leafy greens, snow peas, select herbs, and raspberries, or to cook these items.
Barbara Kowalcyk, an associate professor at George Washington University's Milken Institute of Public Health and director of its Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security, drew a direct connection between funding cuts and investigative delays. "If you're understaffed you might be interviewing patients after six to eight weeks," she said, adding that typical delays have "likely been exacerbated" by the loss of grant funding.
State and local health departments often cobble together funding from multiple sources to maintain core staff. When one funding stream disappears, departments face a stark choice: reduce staff or cut hours. "If you take one away, you have to have people go part-time or you have to reduce your staff. There's not a lot of choice, which means your capacity to scale up during an outbreak is limited," Kowalcyk explained.
The reduction of FoodNet's scope means states have lost a critical tool for coordinating information across borders. Since its creation, FoodNet helped establish that roughly 48 million Americans contract foodborne illnesses annually, with 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths. Without that cross-state surveillance network, investigators operate largely in isolation.
Gail Hansen, a public health and veterinary consultant, warned that eliminating FoodNet's broader mandate would "bring us back to a time before FoodNet." She noted that "states do not have the ability to coordinate information and data across states" without the program's infrastructure.
The administration has defended the FoodNet changes as eliminating redundancy, arguing that other surveillance systems now monitor the pathogens FoodNet previously tracked. The CDC stated in April that the surveillance landscape has evolved significantly since FoodNet launched in 1995, and that foodborne pathogen investigations remain unaffected by the narrowed scope.
When contacted for comment, the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond.
Author James Rodriguez: "Stripping surveillance tools during an active outbreak is reckless, and the timing here suggests the administration's cuts were ideological rather than strategic."
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