Cyclospora Outbreak: What This Produce Recall Actually Tells Us About Our Food System

You’ve probably seen the headlines about the recent Cyclospora outbreak linked to fresh produce. 

Unfortunately, thousands of people have gotten sick with severe diarrhea, nausea and bloating.

While I’ll briefly explain what Cyclospora is and how it spreads, I think the much more interesting story is what this outbreak reveals about our food system.

To be clear, I am not denying that this is a real outbreak. People are genuinely getting sick. And the experience doesn't sound fun! 

But what caught my attention wasn’t the parasite.

It was a different question…

How does something like this happen in the first place?

Because from my perspective, the parasite isn’t actually the story.

The food system is.

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Meet Cyclospora (The Short Version)

Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that only infects humans.

And yes, it comes from human poop.

One interesting thing about it is that it isn’t immediately infectious when it leaves the body. It actually has to sit in the environment for about 1–2 weeks before it matures and can infect someone else.

That means people don’t usually catch Cyclospora directly from another person.

It also means outbreaks typically aren’t caused by someone who is sick preparing your salad the day before.

Instead, contamination usually happens earlier in the long supply chain of the modern food system, most often through contaminated irrigation water, washing water, or poor sanitation during growing or processing.

Another challenge is that cyclospora is also unusually difficult to remove from produce.

That’s one reason public health officials often recommend avoiding implicated raw produce during an active outbreak.

Washing your produce is still recommended and may reduce contamination levels, but neither washing nor common disinfectants can be relied upon to eliminate it completely. Cooking is by far the most reliable way to destroy it.

Until investigators identify the source, if I were shopping from the conventional food system, I’d personally be a little more cautious with:

> raw leafy greens used in salads
> prewashed bagged salad kits
> salad bars and restaurant salads
> pre-cut fruit bowls
> fresh berries
> fresh herbs
> pre made salsas

Since cooking fully destroys the parasite, cooked vegetables are still on the menu, and berries can still be enjoyed in homemade jams, pies, cobblers, or other cooked recipes.

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The Real Story is Scale

As an engineer, I sometimes look at things a little differently.

When I read about an outbreak like this, my first thought isn’t, “What parasite caused it?”

It’s, “How is the system designed?”

Because every system has strengths.

And every system has tradeoffs.

Our modern food system is incredibly efficient. It can harvest, wash, package, and distribute millions of servings of produce across the country.

That’s remarkable, truly.

But here’s the tradeoff of this highly centralized food system.

When produce from industrial monocropped farms is pooled together, processed in centralized facilities, and distributed nationwide…

one small problem can become a very big problem.

Now add another layer. Today, roughly 50-60% of fresh produce Americans eat is imported from other countries.

So before that head of lettuce (or container of berries) reaches your kitchen, it may have passed through:

• Multiple industrial-scale farms
• Different water sources
• Different workers
• Packing facilities
• International transportation
• Ports of entry
• Importers
• Distribution centers
• Warehouses
• And eventually… your local grocery store or fast food chains 

None of those individual steps are inherently unsafe.

But every additional step is another opportunity for something to go wrong.

And every additional handoff makes it harder to know exactly what happened if something does.

(Which is likely why they still haven’t identified the source at the time of writing this).

From a systems perspective, large, multi-state foodborne outbreaks aren’t unexpected… they’re an inherent risk of an increasingly complex and centralized food system.

When you design a food system that centralizes production, pools it together, and distributes millions of servings through the same supply chain, a single failure can ripple across the entire country.

In short: 

The more steps there are between the farmer and your plate, the more trust you’re placing in a system instead of a relationship.

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Every Food Comes With Risk

One thing I hope you don’t take away from this is that produce is “unsafe.” It’s not. I eat fresh produce every single day.

So the point of this post isn’t to scare people away from fruits and vegetables.

It’s to help explain why these large outbreaks continue to happen.

This isn’t the first one, and it won’t be the last because it’s one of the tradeoffs of a highly centralized food system.

The other thing I hope this outbreak makes people think about is how inconsistently we talk about food risk.

When a nationwide produce outbreak happens we investigate it, we issue recalls, we (eventually) identify the source, then we move on like nothing happened. We don’t decide that lettuce is dangerous forever. 

But when the conversation shifts to raw dairy… the tone changes completely. 

When I've testified at the State Capitol about food freedom and raw milk, opposing legislators frequently point to a Salmonella outbreak linked to raw milk between 2023 and 2024 that resulted in 171 documented illnesses.

What they conveniently leave out is that during that same time period, the largest Salmonella outbreak in the United States (with 551 illnesses and 155 hospitalizations) was linked to… 

industrially produced cucumbers. 

People getting sick is never okay. Whether it’s lettuce, raw milk, spinach, ground beef or cucumbers.

But no food is completely risk-free because food isn’t sterile. It never has been!

So the goal isn’t zero risk. The goal should be informed risk.

Every day, adults make informed decisions about foods with known risks.

Raw oysters. Sushi. Runny egg yolks. Rare steak. Raw cookie dough. Alcohol. Vape pens. Unpasteurized juices.

And apparently…

Lettuce.

In those situations, the government doesn't ban access. It generally provides information so adults can make informed decisions.

So why isn't that same philosophy applied more consistently across all foods including farm-fresh foods like raw milk?

Because in my opinion, the answer isn’t pretending one food is perfectly safe while another is uniquely dangerous.

The answer is transparency.

Know where your food came from.
Know who produced it.
Understand the risks.

And then let people decide for themselves! 

To me, that’s what food freedom is really about.

It’s not the absence of responsibility. It’s the restoration of responsibility to the people closest to the food: the farmer producing it and the customer choosing it. 

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This is Why We Care so Much About Knowing Our Farmers

This outbreak reminds me why I believe so deeply in supporting small farms, and what we’re building here at Nourish Food Club.

Not because small farms are perfect.

And not because regenerative agriculture magically eliminates all food safety risks.

But because shorter supply chains are more transparent.

When you know your farmer, you know where your food came from. You know how it was grown. And you know who’s responsible for it!

That’s incredibly difficult to recreate in a centralized food system that pools together produce from countless massive industrial farms (sometimes across multiple countries) before it reaches your plate.

If you’re lucky enough to have a local farmer you know and trust…

That’s amazing. Keep supporting them!! 

But I also understand that most people can’t spend every Saturday driving from one farm for produce, another for meat, another for eggs, another for sourdough…

Life is busy.

Convenience matters. We just don’t think it should come at the expense of transparency.

That’s exactly why we built Nourish.

To make it just as convenient to support small regenerative farmers as it is to shop the industrial food system. 😀

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“Ashley… should I be worried about my Nourish produce box?”

We’ve received several messages like this over the past few days.

The short answer - No, I am not worried. 

Not because I think our produce is somehow “immune” to food safety issues. And not because I believe any food is completely risk-free.

I’m confident about eating our produce because I know exactly where it was grown…

And who grew it.

We don’t source our produce from anonymous industrial supply chains. 

We source it directly from small regenerative farms that we know personally.

This week, I ate my way through our entire Seasonal Produce Box. Tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, onions… the whole thing. 

Happy to report…

Zero explosive diarrhea. 🥗😂

All jokes aside…

This is exactly the kind of food system we’re trying to build.

Not a “perfect” one. A shorter one.

For our Seasonal Produce Boxes, it looks like this:

🌱 Day 1: Harvested on few small, diverse regenerative farms and chilled in a cooler overnight after harvest.

📦 Day 2: Carefully packed and shipped out directly to your doorstep.

That’s it.

The fewer steps there are between the farmer and your plate, the easier it is to know where your food came from, and who’s standing behind it.

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My Takeaway

Every food system has strengths.

And every food system has compromises.

Industrial agriculture has made food more abundant and convenient than ever before.

But it has also made the journey from the farmer to your plate longer, more complex, and harder to see.

The goal isn’t to fear produce.

It’s to understand the food system that brought it to your plate.

That’s why I still believe one of the most valuable food labels isn’t “organic,” “natural,” or even “pasture-raised.”

It’s this:

Know Your Farmer.

Because the shorter the distance between the farmer and your plate…

The easier it is to know where your food came from, and the easier it is to know who’s standing behind it.

Thank you for helping us build that kind of food system.