Cyclospora and salmonella outbreaks raise concerns about U.S. food safety

By — William Brangham William Brangham By — Karina Cuevas Karina Cuevas Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/cyclospora-and-salmonella-outbreaks-raise-concerns-about-u-s-food-safety Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio Public health concerns are widening as cyclosporiasis cases surge and a salmonella outbreak across 17 states has many Americans raising concerns about U.S. food safety. Back-to-back cases where people are getting sick from food have put many on edge. William Brangham discussed the concerns with Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Geoff Bennett: Public health concerns are growing, as cyclosporiasis cases surge, and now a salmonella outbreak across 17 states has many Americans raising concerns about U.S. food safety. William Brangham tells us more. William Brangham: Geoff, these back-to-back cases where people are getting sick from food have put many people on edge and raised questions about the nation's food supply. With nearly 4,200 confirmed cyclospora cases nationwide across nine states, and more than 7,400 additional unconfirmed cases, plus a salmonella outbreak linked to eggs that has sickened almost 100 people so far, consumers are wondering if enough is being done to keep unsafe food out of our stores. For more on these concerns, we are joined again by Caitlin Rivers. She's an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. Caitlin, so nice to have you back on the program. Let's start off with this troubling pattern. We have got this very, very big cyclospora outbreak happening, really concentrated in Michigan, but we're also seeing the salmonella outbreak. Is this just a particularly bad year or is something else going on here? Dr. Caitlin Rivers, Epidemiologist, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security: I think both are true here. There is no question that this is a very large outbreak of cyclosporiasis. To my knowledge, it's the largest on record. And so that is absolutely consequential. The addition of the salmonella outbreak in eggs is unsettling, but actually not uncommon. There are one to two large outbreaks of something, some sort of foodborne illness each month. And so currently it's salmonella and shelled eggs, but the existence of a second sizable outbreak is not in itself notable. William Brangham: Is there a connection between these two? I mean, I know cyclospora, we have seen that linked to contaminated water being sprayed onto lettuce and in some cases berries, but we're still searching for the root cause of that, or the root causes, salmonella, as you mentioned, linked to eggs. Is there any linkage between these two things, or are they just separate outbreaks? Dr. Caitlin Rivers: They're just separate outbreaks. They're caused by different pathogens, different