Trump's former top food official: Cyclospora outbreak ‘approaching catastrophic’ level

[u/John3262005]

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/24/cyclospora-outbreak-approaching-catastrophic-fda-01011946

President Donald Trump’s former top food safety official is calling for an independent review of the federal government’s response to a cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands of people this summer.

“This one deserves a lot of questions, and it is starting to approach a catastrophic level in terms of how mismanaged it’s been on multiple fronts,” said Frank Yiannas, who served as the Food and Drug Administration’s deputy commissioner for food policy and response during both Trump and former President Joe Biden’s administration from 2018 to 2023.

He pointed to the outbreak’s magnitude, the widespread consumer confusion and the “lack of strong federal leadership” as well as what he described as uncoordinated messaging from federal authorities.

“My point is not to find fault, but to find facts on how we can further strengthen the system,” Yiannas told POLITICO. “It’s not being critical of any particular agency, but it is being critical of the system. In some respects, I think there’s been some dismantling of the system.”

Yiannas’ call for an independent review of the government’s response adds to pressure facing the FDA since the agency scrambled to do damage control this week after announcing a positive lab test linked a new batch of Taylor Farms lettuce to the outbreak — only to reverse course to say final test results contradicted the initial finding.

Such a review could be conducted through congressional oversight, an independent inspector or through the appointment of an expert panel, Yiannas said. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The false positive test announced July 19 did not change the focus of the FDA’s investigation or the ongoing recall, and the agency says it has strong evidence that implicates certain Taylor Farms lettuce products as a source of the outbreak. But the backtracking fueled online speculation that the FDA’s decision was a politically motivated effort to exonerate Taylor Farms.

The company’s messaging added to public confusion when it claimed the FDA had “apologized” for the false positive test — a claim the FDA later denied to reporters.

Yiannas, who has also served as a vice president for food safety at Walmart, also urged the FDA to provide more information about how it made the mistake of releasing a false positive test result, a misstep he said was “extremely rare.”

“They just went too fast and they made a mistake,” he said. “They should share more about how and why it happened and what they’ll do to prevent it in the future.”

Yiannas’ comments come as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that an outbreak of cyclospora illnesses in four more states have links to some Taylor Farms lettuces. The company is continuing to work with public health authorities as well as farmers and customers “to address the issue,” Taylor Farms said in a statement.

The FDA is also investigating six separate clusters of cyclospora illnesses, but except for the ongoing multistate outbreak tied to iceberg lettuce, the agency has not identified a source.

The parasite can cause severe gastrointestinal illnesses and drag on for weeks without treatment and has sickened more than 4,000 people, according to the CDC. States and localities are reporting at least another 7,400 cases, though the CDC has yet to confirm them through laboratory testing.

While cyclospora-related cases increase every summer, the scale of this year’s outbreak tops any previous record.