Earlier this week, Taco Bell delivered a blow to patrons hoping to “eat real food.” At several locations, signs informed customers that fresh ingredients like lettuce, cilantro and onion are off the menu. The reason: explosive diarrhea risk. We may never know the proximate cause of the ongoing, nationwide surge in infections by the parasite Cyclospora. According to FDA and Michigan health officials, many victims ate bagged salads, but lettuce is just one of many food sources under investigation. Already though, the strain caused by indiscriminate funding cuts on the nation’s public health infrastructure is showing, and a movement for better policy is growing. Call it “Make America Not Have Explosive Diarrhea Again”?

For now, America has a lot of explosive diarrhea: thousands of cases of cyclosporiasis, based on reports from news outlets tallying up the state data. Michigan alone has over 3,000 cases, with more than two dozen other states conducting active investigations. These cases may not all be related, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “multiple jurisdictions have reported an increase of cases in the last two weeks compared to the same period in 2025.”

Unfortunately, cyclospora presents special challenges compared to other foodborne pathogens like E.coli O157:H7 or Salmonella. Symptoms of infection usually appear an entire week after eating contaminated food, and may remain latent as long as two weeks. That complicates the job of epidemiologists in state and local health departments tasked with “connecting the dots” between illnesses and contamination sources by, for example, collecting dietary histories from case patients. Imagine trying to recall everything you ate more than a week ago, all while coping with explosive diarrhea.

That’s not the only special challenge that Cyclospora presents. For most other foodborne pathogens, a simple test reveals the microorganism’s presence, and then technicians can use a sample to grow a larger culture of the organism. Those cells make whole genome sequencing (WGS) possible, which connects samples across far flung times and distances. WGS played a critical role, for example, in solving the recent Listeria outbreak linked to Boar’s Head brand liverwurst, which killed ten people. But Cyclospora does not grow well in laboratory settings, so epidemiologists cannot easily compare the genetic markers of samples collected from case patients to determine whether they are related and likely to have originated from a common contaminated food source.

Fortunately, cyclosporiasis rarely causes death, but its long latency time and quirky biology put a premium on the unglamorous, labor-intensive work of foodborne illness epidemiology: interviewing case patients, analyzing shopper card data and restaurant menus, designing and coding case-control studies to isolate suspect foods. Unfortunately, the nation’s capacity to carry out this work has diminished significantly as a result of haphazard funding cuts initiated under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and an ongoing politicization of grants and other federal revenue sources that support frontline workers in state and local public health departments.

Since January of 2025, CDC’s workforce has shrunk by over 25%, and cuts to CDC funding, including the clawback of $11.4 billion in CDC grant funding to states, have resulted in massive layoffs at state and local health departments around the country. Roughly 80% of CDC’s domestic funding is allocated to state and local partners, so this is hardly an “inside the beltway” problem. Last year, the Michigan Health and Human Services director testified before the state legislature about how federal funding cuts had undermined infectious disease detection and response activities. This year’s presidential budget proposes a further 40% reduction in CDC’s discretionary funding for fiscal year 2027, which would virtually guarantee an even more compromised response to outbreaks of foodborne illnesses like cyclosporiasis.

Cyclospora was one of the six pathogens that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unceremoniously dumped last summer from its Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, or FoodNet, tracking requirements. FoodNet is responsible for tracking long-term foodborne illness trends, not detecting outbreaks, so its downgrade is not directly responsible for the current crisis. Nevertheless, the program is emblematic of the Administration’s “hear no evil, see no evil” approach to disease.

Congress should avoid the temptation to pretend foodborne illness does not exist. Explosive diarrhea does not care about pretenses. A broad coalition of industry and consumer advocacy groups have urged Congress to restore CDC’s food safety funding. Congress should listen, and also take action to protect consumers and food producers alike from the recent power grab proposed by the Office of Management and Budget, which would give political appointees unprecedented control over federal grants to public health and other researchers.

In the meantime, consumers will face some uncomfortable choices. Cyclospora spreads through human feces, typically in contaminated irrigation water. It can contaminate a broad range of foods—from raspberries to cilantro to sugar snap peas—so consumers cannot easily eliminate the risk of infection. Avoiding bagged salads may seem like a reasonable precaution now, but as Rutgers University food science professor Donald Schaffner has pointed out, by the time a batch of contaminated produce begins making people sick, it has likely worked its way through the system. CDC recommends some basic steps to reduce risk, such as washing produce and being careful to quickly refrigerate produce after its prepared. However, for those of us unwilling to cook our salad greens or cut out fresh produce from our diets altogether, the specter of explosive diarrhea may loom a bit larger for some time to come. MANHEDA!