Trump's Trials - Cyclosporiasis outbreak is a test for agencies where Trump made cuts

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Last year's funding cuts to federal agencies that oversee foodborne illness outbreaks are being tested with the record cyclosporiasis outbreak in the U.S. NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Trump's terms. I'm Scott Detrow. Every episode, we bring you one story from NPR's recent coverage of the 47th president. With a focus on ways his administration is pushing the boundaries of presidential power. Here's the latest from NPR. I'm Michelle Martin in Washington, D.C. This year's count of confirmed cyclosporiasis cases reached nearly 14,000 this week, seven times the previous record. The CDC also suspects an additional.

additional 10,000 cases of the diarrhea-causing bug largely from contaminated lettuce grown in Mexico. NPR's Uki-Nakushi looks at how this year's federal response has changed. Until three years ago, epidemiologist Susan Maine ran the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. She says that branch of the Food and Drug Administration monitors 80% of what the U.S. eats, anything that isn't meat or poultry. It's everything. It's microbial. It's chemical. It's allergens. in foods, and it also includes nutrition and labeling. In Maine's Day, it employed 1,100 people plus a cadre of inspectors. But she says the Trump administration's sweeping cuts last year, especially to health agencies,

eliminated teams who played key roles responding to past crises. That includes staff who worked with FDA counterparts in other countries to coordinate outbreak response. They were all let go. And now we have this outbreak with Mexico. I don't know who's managing that partnership. Those relationships, obviously, have been disrupted. In his statement to NPR, a spokesperson for health and human services says that foreign liaison team was reinstated.

But what's also been lost, Maine says, are many microbiologists and epidemiologists doing research on cyclospora and various federally funded labs. Maine used to seek advice, for example, from the CDC's Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria. A majority of that lapse funding came from USAID. The international agency, the Trump administration, shuddered. That had ramifications for a domestic cyclospororor response because CDC, just like FDA, shares expertise. Maine says the government's lack of clarity or action in the ongoing outbreak shows just how much has changed with federal readiness, making foodborne illness harder to prevent, harder to trace, and harder to continue. I think that that has really pushed us into a new level of vulnerability in terms of our food safety system.

Epidemiologist Dan Jernigan oversaw the CDC's infectious disease unit until resigning last summer. In the past, Jernigan says those labs helped doctors identify pathogens, for example. But with both funding and staff down by about half, his former colleagues tell him they're triaging, working only on the biggest cases. They historically would help states on every outbreak that they had of cyclospora, but now they're going to only work on those outbreaks that span multiple states. HHS said in a statement to NPR that the CDC's labs were not affected by cuts. Jernigan says the CDC also last year removed six of the eight pathogens it actively tracks

through an in-depth foodborne illness surveillance database. cyclospora was cut. It's the only way that you really have a stable estimate of are things getting worse or not. Susan Maine, the former FDA official, points to another factor that might have altered the course of this year's food-borne disease, a food traceability rule from 2011, which was delayed again earlier this year. Maine says the rule requires barcodes on produce that can track contamination. its source within 24 hours. And it's not just the trace back, it's also the trace forward. You then have these records to say, where did all that let us go?

Knowing where contaminated supply traveled, she says, would have helped limit spread. Yuki NPR News. And before we wrap up, a thank you to our NPR Plus supporters who hear each show without sponsored messages and, of course, who help protect individuals. journalism. If you are not a supporter yet, you can visit plus.npr.org to find out how you can get a ton of podcast perks across dozens of NPR shows, like bonus episodes, exclusive merchandise, and more. Again, that's plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to Trump's Terms from NPR.