A foodborne parasite and government efficiency

Week-long explosive diarrhea.

There. Now that we’ve got your attention, here’s a cautionary tale about red-tape reduction and public health.

Government regulation is often described by those who have to adhere to it as “red tape,” and governments often set out on red-tape reduction campaigns, based on the conjoined goals of freeing business from unnecessary regulation and freeing governments from having to pay to employ public servants to implement that regulation.

Reduction campaigns often begin by finding the most ludicrous example of government regulation in sight and characterizing it as typical of government rule-making. The fact that many government regulations keep us safe and healthy isn’t usually part of the red-tape discussion.

But, babies and bathwater.

Right now, the United States is suffering through its worst outbreak ever of the foodborne infection known as cyclospora. It’s a nasty little beastie that spreads through contact with human feces, and its symptoms, though not often fatal, can be long-lasting. Bloating, stomach cramps and yes, the aforementioned watery, explosive diarrhea, can last for weeks, and can even disappear and then return. The parasite is usually transmitted on fruits and vegetables eaten raw — raspberries, snow peas, lettuce, bagged-salad mixtures — and it often isn’t removed by washing in fresh water.

Across 41 U.S. states, more than 4,100 people are confirmed to have the infection. An additional 7,000 cases are being investigated — and state authorities, contacted by the New York Times, cited a total of more than 11,000 cases. (In an average year, slightly more than 2,000 cases occur in the U.S.)

Tracking the source of the infection is already difficult for cyclospora, because it’s a parasite that takes time — roughly a week after ingestion — before symptoms develop.

Still, the sheer scale of the outbreak is unsettling.

Another unsettling element is how quickly the huge outbreak has come on the heels of the gutting of public health resources by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

DOGE and the Trump administration led major cuts to the agencies responsible for U.S. food safety, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control disease tracking system and the U.S. Department of Agriculture and FoodNet, an early warning system where testing for cyclospora became optional, instead of required, under the Trump administration.

FoodNet had required outbreak tracking for a variety of foodborne illnesses, including salmonella, a strain of E. coli, campylobacter, listeria, cyclospora, shigella, vibrio and yersinia.

Now, only salmonella and the E. coli strain are tracked.

As Elaine Scallan Walter, a professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health, told the New York Times in September 2025, “We’re really gutting one of the cornerstones of food safety.”

It was not only FoodNet that changed policies: the Food and Drug Administration, acting on advice from Congress, delayed new regulations on food traceability that would have required suppliers to quickly and thoroughly supply product tracing to the FDA in the event of an outbreak — including leafy greens and herbs, both regularly cited in cyclospora outbreaks. The rules were supposed to come into effect at the beginning of 2026 — now, the new rules will arrive in 2028.

All in all, a recipe for an outbreak, brought to you by “government efficiency.”

It is true that not all regulations are required and it is equally true that slavish adherence to the letter of the law and the minutiae of every regulation can look an awful lot like bureaucratic overreach. (We’ll have more on that in an upcoming editorial.)

The problem is having the time, effort and imagination needed to truly separate good rules from bad ones while keeping public safety front of mind.