Cyclospora outbreak tops 11,000 cases across 41 states

More than 11,500 suspected cyclospora illnesses have spread across 41 states, and public-health experts say staffing and funding cuts left federal investigators with less room to move fast enough. The outbreak has sharpened scrutiny of how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration track contaminated produce once cases begin climbing.

Cyclospora cayetanensis causes cyclosporiasis, a parasitic intestinal infection commonly spread through contaminated food or drink, especially produce. On July 14, the FDA said it was investigating produce items in a separate multistate cyclospora outbreak of 72 confirmed cases, but it had not identified the source or location at that point.

By July 24, CDC and FDA outbreak pages had linked another multistate cyclospora outbreak to shredded iceberg lettuce in nine states: Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. CDC data cited in July put the broader tally at more than 11,500 suspected cases across 41 states, including 4,173 laboratory-confirmed cases and 308 hospitalizations, with about 7,400 additional unconfirmed cases.

The scale of the illnesses has fed criticism that the federal government entered the summer with weaker surveillance than it should have had. CDC’s FoodNet surveillance network reduced monitoring of some pathogens, including cyclospora, in July 2025, a change that came a year before the outbreak counts surged and gave critics another example of how reduced oversight can delay detection and response.

Former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said the outbreak needed “as much transparency as we can get.” Rep. Josh Gottheimer, meanwhile, announced a Bipartisan Foodborne Illness Rapid Response Act and called for the CDC to restore mandatory parasite surveillance, arguing that Washington needs clearer, faster systems to track foodborne threats.

For consumers, the immediate burden is uncertainty about which produce is safe and which is not, especially when officials have tied one outbreak to shredded iceberg lettuce while investigating another cluster without a known source. Growers and retailers face intensified scrutiny of supply chains, more pressure to document sourcing and sanitation, and a faster path to recalls or pullbacks if investigators connect additional cases to a single item.