RFK Jr. Cut Funding For FoodNet, Making It Harder To Figure Out Why You’re Shitting Yourself Uncontrollably

from the shitshow dept

Are you currently pooping yourself uncontrollably and want to know why? Well, the CDC made that slightly more difficult last year, but you might just have cyclosporiasis, the unintentional weight loss craze that is gripping parts of the country.

The disease — cyclosporiasis — is a foodborne illness caused by a microscopic parasite called cyclospora. Fresh produce is almost always the source. Previous outbreaks have involved raspberries, bagged lettuce or salads, cilantro and basil. Rarely, it can also be waterborne.

However it enters the human body, people usually start feeling sick about a week later. The illness can begin with flu-like symptoms, such as severe fatigue and body aches. What really sets cyclosporiasis symptoms apart is explosive, watery diarrhea that’s sometimes uncontrollable. People may also have unusually bad gas, stomach cramps and nausea. Consequently, most people lose their appetite. Low-grade fevers are rare.

It is, by all accounts, an absolutely awful experience. 10% of cases will result in hospitalization and it is particularly dangerous for the very young and elderly populations. Cyclosporiasis, while not traditionally in the popular lexicon, is also not new. It’s generally seasonal with case counts in the 10s in many states. What’s making this at all newsworthy is just how far in front of that pace the current outbreaks in Michigan, Ohio, New York, and Illinois are.

The outbreak has been particularly intense in Michigan, which had 1,562 cases as of Friday. Illnesses, caused by the cyclospora parasite, have also been reported in neighboring Ohio, as well as in Colorado, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin and other states.

Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical executive of Michigan, said the rapid rise is “highly unusual.” The state usually sees 40 to 50 cases of cyclosporiasis a year. She said laboratories in the state are scrambling to sequence the genome of the bug to track where it came from.

Now, we had a program for surveilling and tracking this sort of thing. Unfortunately, that program was severely scaled back in 2025 by the Trump administration and RFK Jr. The CDC’s FoodNet program is a federal-state partnership for tracking foodborne illness. 10 states participate in the program. To be clear, New York and Colorado are the only states currently dealing with serious concerns for cyclosporiasis that also participate in the program… but that’s largely besides the point. Looking at which states participate, it’s obvious that they were chosen because they are spread out throughout the states to give you a decent national sampling for an outbreak.

And the government scaled FoodNet back in 2025 in a way that now looks rather stupid.

As of July 1, the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) program has reduced surveillance to just two pathogens: salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told NBC News.

Before July, the program had been tracking infections caused by six additional pathogens: campylobacter, cyclospora, listeria, shigella, vibrio and Yersinia. Some of them can lead to severe or life-threatening illnesses, particularly for newborns and people who are pregnant or have weakened immune systems. Monitoring for the six pathogens is no longer required for the 10 states that participate in the program, though those states aren’t precluded from conducting surveillance on their own.

Now that this current outbreak appears to be spreading across state lines, that kind of surveillance infrastructure sure would be a nice to have, especially as individual state health departments are “scrambling” to sequence the genomes of the illness and do that work as best they can.

In lieu of that, all we have instead is a hope and a prayer that RFK Jr. is paying as much attention as his spokespeople claim he is.

In a statement to USA TODAY, the Food and Drug Administration said, “Under the leadership of Secretary [Robert Kennedy Jr.], FDA is currently investigating cyclospora outbreaks using established epidemiologic, laboratory and traceback tools in close coordination with CDC and state and local partners.”

Somehow, I have my doubts. Unless there are vaccines or autism involved, Kennedy rarely shows much interest in doing HHS’ work at all.

Filed Under: cdc, cycloporiasis, foodnet, health & human services, rfk jr.