Americans and their lettuce

It seems kind of amazing that First World America continually has outbreaks of food poisoning that seem to come down to contaminated plants.  It also seems amazing that, with this history, the Trump administration would say "you know what, lets loosen reporting requirements":

The U.S. has long relied on an approach called Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP), originally developed in the late 1950s by NASA and Pillsbury to keep astronauts from getting food poisoning in zero gravity. HACCP maps out every point “from farm to fork, those key choke points” where contamination could occur, and builds in monitoring and a “stop” mechanism when something goes wrong, Schwab says. It works—but only when it’s actively maintained, reported, and enforced. 

According to Schwab, the enforcement piece is what has eroded. Federal agencies have lost staff and funding needed to inspect, audit, and monitor food producers, leaving more of the system dependent on voluntary industry self-regulation.  

“Self-regulation works until it doesn’t,” Schwab says. That’s where FoodNet came in. FoodNet is the joint CDC-FDA-USDA-EPA active surveillance system that tracks foodborne illness across 10 sentinel sites. Cyclospora reporting was mandatory until July 2025 when the Trump administration made reporting optional for Cyclospora, along with five other pathogens (Campylobacter, Listeria, Shigella, Vibrio, and Yersinia). 

“Cuts to food safety ... make the food system more susceptible to these types of outbreaks,” says Love.  

 And further down:

Restoring surveillance capacity, Schwab argues, is the central fix: a fully funded, fully staffed federal system with mandatory pathogen reporting so that multistate patterns are identified within days rather than after an outbreak has already spread nationwide. States that have kept investing in their own monitoring show what’s possible, but a state-by-state patchwork can’t substitute for a coordinated federal response, particularly for products that cross state lines. 

It’s critical to ensure that there are strict controls on irrigation water, and on-farm sanitation practices can minimize risks, says Love: “Are farm workers given time to go to the bathroom? Are bathrooms provided to them? Do they have a handwashing station with warm water? That gets back to, you know, how do you treat your workers?”