August 26, 2026 • 13 mins
The US has an unusual number of outbreaks of food-borne illness going on in the summer of 2026, and the star of the show is cyclospora. How does this parasite make people sick, where does it come from? You may not want to know.
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Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Jerry's here sitting in for day. So this is the
short Stuff. Let's go.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That's right. Today, we're talking about the recent cyclo sporiasis
outbreak that everyone heard about, notably with like tainted lettuce
usually is what you're hearing on the news, and Taco
Bell was in the news because it turns out that
the supplier that they used was seems to have been
(00:31):
ground zero for this outbreak. But we're gonna explain what
cyclospora is all about.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, it's this outbreak as of August thirteenth, which was
the latest data we could find. It's August twentieth, now,
so this is old. Okay, it's twenty eight fifty six
people have been sickened with I'm gonna I'm going with cyclosporiasis.
It sounded like you gave the British pronunciation boreassis. Yes, yeah,
(01:00):
it suddenly sounded like you had tea in your hand. Yeah.
So twenty eight thousand plus people have been sicken, two
people have died, and just a month before it was
at nine four hundred and eighty one cases. And you're like, wow,
that's a lot of people, and it is. This is
actually the third biggest food born outbreak in US history.
(01:20):
From what anyone could tell, it's the biggest cyclospora outbreak
in human history. And even with those eye popping stats
associated with it, that twenty eight thousand case number is
probably just a fraction of the actual number of cases
of people who have gotten sickened by with cyclosporiasis.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, for sure, I think there were only thirty eight
states reporting the you know, as far as reporting goes,
it's like people who went to the hospital and a
lot of people just like wrote it out, I'm sure.
And then even at the hospital you have to have
a special test to see if it's actually that, and
not all the hospitals probably did that test, so they
(02:05):
probably just treated people for dehydration and diarrhea. So it's
a much bigger number than that. And let's talk about
what this thing is. Because it is a not a plant,
it's not a fungus or an animal. It's not a
bacteria or a virus. It is a protozoan and it's
a parasite and the human is the host.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, and it's not brand new. But the reason we
can pretty confidently say that in all of human history,
this is the biggest outbreak of cyclosporiasis. Is because the
first case that anyone's ever documented was in like nineteen
seventy eight in Papua New Guinea, and it's even newer
here in the United States. The first outbreak was in
(02:45):
nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Right, yeah, in Chicago, only twenty three cases. Then there
was one in Florida the next year, about forty five cases.
Those were raspberries from Guatemala. And every summer basically there's
a little something, but nothing like we saw this year.
They you know, this stuff can live. This protozoan can
live in rivers. It lives in water drinking water, rivers, lakes,
(03:08):
swimming pools, and it likes to hide in like berries
and leafy vegetables because there's lots of little crevices and
nooks and crannies where it won't get washed out even
if you're like rinsing your stuff. Also on knives and utensils,
and also from unwashed hands.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Gross very like just let's be clear. It passes through
human sewage. That's its mode of transportation, right, So that
means that somebody had human poop on their knife or
their hands, if that's where you got it.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, so we should talk about the life cycle because
it begins when it enters your mouth. It is in
what's earliest stage. It's an infectious o cyst. Did you
know how that's what was pronounced.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
That's the British way pronouncing it. I'm going with ossist.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
It is osis to actually look that up. And it
is an egg that basically protects it from the outside
world until it gets into the human system where it
latches onto your gut and starts a fourteen stage life cycle,
which takes two days to two weeks to incubate before
(04:25):
it becomes an infection.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yeah, and the reason it takes so long is because
that HSIs. Is that what you said?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, with emphasis on the first ooh ooh or osis
sorry o sist.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, like ooh ooh sis. It's very tough. It's like
a tough container like you said, that protects the actual
infectious part and it has to break down, and it's
evolved to break down in the human gut thanks to
your digestive juices and your bile and the temperature of
your body inside your gut, all those things come together
(04:59):
and break the oos this down, and now all of
a sudden, four sausage shaped spoiulets get dumped out into
your gut and start going to work and essentially making
it really hard for your gut to absorb water. And
because your body's trying to poop this stuff out, you
have water butt like you have never had it before.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
That's right. And every time you do poop, you pass
along up to ten thousand osis per cubic centimeter of feces.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
That's a lot ooey gooey. Theces it says, should we
take a break?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, all right, we'll be right back. Sweat shot shot stop,
(06:09):
all right, so we're back. You said, the main symptom
is really really bad diarrhea, which obviously was going to
lead to bad dehydration, like dangerous dehydration and electrolyte imbalances,
potential kidney damage, risk, maybe hospitalization. As we've seen up
to ten percent body weight weight loss.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
That's nuts.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
That's a lot, you know, depending on who you are.
But that's a lot no matter what, because it's ten
percent of whoever you are, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yeah, what's interesting is there's not an inflammation or fever
that's usually associated with a stomach bug. It's just a
lot of pooping and the risk of really bad dehydration
and then all the stuff that comes with that, right.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
So once you poop that stuff out, it makes it
back into the water supply, it gets back into your
food stuff we'll talk about in a second, and then
the cycle begins again. And that's probably what happened. The
water supply was used on food crops where really, if
you step back and think about it for even a second,
(07:14):
it shouldn't be. But let's talk about Chuck. Why this
US outbreak in twenty twenty six is the biggest one,
the biggest cyclist bariasis outbreak in human history.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, well, one is a climate change, you know, with
rising temperatures across the globe. These you know, I don't
think we mentioned that this thing used to be found
only in the tropics, right, but now these pathogens can
be found elsewhere because of rising temps. The second one,
and you know, we're not getting political, but this is
just a stone cold fact. This presidential administration is cut
(07:48):
funding for food safety programs, including two key ones that
might have stopped this the Food Emergency Response Network. They
grant states funding to test for food pathogens like this,
and food Net which track outbreak causing pathogens, and food
Nets specifically literally, because of a lack of funding, stopped
(08:08):
tracking six of the eight pathogens that it used to
always track, and cyclospora is one of those.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
So you know, that's just the deal.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Plus the federal agencies that are responsible for basically taking
the lead and guiding healthcare providers and public health officials
and all that stuff throughout the country just sat on
their hands for months. As a matter of fact, it
was about two full months before the CDC stepped forward
(08:40):
with guidelines and essentially basically really started talking about this publicly.
In the meantime, this outbreak was bad enough that somebody
had to do something. So Michigan ended up stepping forward
and filling the role that the CDC was just dropping
the ball on. They ended up issuing guidelines and stuff
that obviously weren't you know, regulations or anything, but that
(09:03):
other healthcare providers in other states were like, Okay, good,
now I know what to do thanks to the state
of Michigan, not the federal government, which is supposed to do.
And if you put all that together, you're like, wow,
this happened really fast, and to me, it gives a
picture of like the United States built a really impressive
(09:24):
food born illness surveillance network that was fragile apparently, but
that really worked because if you just pull that stuff
away and then this is the stuff that happens. I
think there's twenty food born outbreaks right now going on
in the United States. It's in a way, it's really
impressive how effective it was before.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, for sure, And boy, hats off to you Michiganers
for taking the lead on that. One of the other
big reasons is big agriculture. When it's you know, something
like that has been consolidated so much an industry has
that means that you know, Americans are getting their crops
from just you know, the same places basically, So if
(10:08):
something like this happens, like happened at Taylor Farms, this
was Tailor Farms to Mexico, which was the agricultural site,
even though it's a California based company, all of a sudden,
this stuff's going out all over the country. There's also
Tailor Farms is also being identified as a source of
the other outbreaks, a couple of them, the salmonilla outbreak,
(10:31):
at least from Jalapenos. I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Yeah, And for those who don't speak Spanish, Taylor farms
to Mexico means tailor farms of Mexico. So and it's
not just Mexico or Guatemala where you're going to find
tainted produce. Something I was kind of alluding to earlier
is that the cyclospora find its way finds its way
to your food crops through human sewage. And that can
(10:58):
actually happen in the United States because there are, let
me find it, more than half. I think twenty seven
states allow for treated sewage water to be used to
irrigate food crops.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I did not know that, I did neither. Nine states
don't have any policy, four have guidelines, and fourteen states
allow it for crops but not food crops. Yeah, and
you know, yeah, that's where it's coming from.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yes, so they and we did say treated sewage waste, yeah,
of course, right, So it's not like they're just spraying
like feces all over your lettuce, but essentially on a
microscopic level, they often are because a lot of sewage
treatment plants aren't set up to handle cyclospora. Because again,
this is not your average bacteria or virus. This is
(11:51):
its own thing. So thecites cysts can make it through
onto your your lettuce or whatever. And then also sometimes
those bacteria and the viruses that the sewage treatment plant
is set up to take care of make it through anyway.
So this is what I was saying. It seems pretty
(12:12):
smart to just stop using treated sewage on food crops.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, and maybe fund the agencies that are responsible for
keeping track of the stuff, would be AWES. Sure.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, So if you feel at all like you should
go to the hospital, if you have cyclo spiasis right now,
or if you have really bad water, but for any reason,
just go, like, don't risk it. Whatever. But if you
don't want to get cyclosporiasis, there are some steps you
can take. One of them is, at the very least
wash off all of your stuff, because that can help.
(12:45):
But cyclosporiasis can still hide, right Chuck.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah, I mean we talked in Act one about the
little nooks and crannies, and it's hard to get through.
Sometimes the only thing to kill it is to cook
it to one hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit. But you're
not cooking your let us for your taco.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
No, that's great. That's like the Mom and Better Off
Dead who boiled the bacon.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, that was a really silly part of that movie,
that whole mom's scene. Yeah. Stuff that's you know, like
stuff that has a nice wrapper around it, like a
banana and avocado. You're doing okay, and you know, do
plenty of handwashing obviously as well.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
For sure. And if you are on the vergeer, I've
already started an email telling us how you used to
like us before we became political. Just stop, don't bother short.
Stuff's out.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Jerry's here sitting in for day. So this is the
short Stuff. Let's go.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That's right. Today, we're talking about the recent cyclo sporiasis
outbreak that everyone heard about, notably with like tainted lettuce
usually is what you're hearing on the news, and Taco
Bell was in the news because it turns out that
the supplier that they used was seems to have been
(00:31):
ground zero for this outbreak. But we're gonna explain what
cyclospora is all about.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, it's this outbreak as of August thirteenth, which was
the latest data we could find. It's August twentieth, now,
so this is old. Okay, it's twenty eight fifty six
people have been sickened with I'm gonna I'm going with cyclosporiasis.
It sounded like you gave the British pronunciation boreassis. Yes, yeah,
(01:00):
it suddenly sounded like you had tea in your hand. Yeah.
So twenty eight thousand plus people have been sicken, two
people have died, and just a month before it was
at nine four hundred and eighty one cases. And you're like, wow,
that's a lot of people, and it is. This is
actually the third biggest food born outbreak in US history.
(01:20):
From what anyone could tell, it's the biggest cyclospora outbreak
in human history. And even with those eye popping stats
associated with it, that twenty eight thousand case number is
probably just a fraction of the actual number of cases
of people who have gotten sickened by with cyclosporiasis.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, for sure, I think there were only thirty eight
states reporting the you know, as far as reporting goes,
it's like people who went to the hospital and a
lot of people just like wrote it out, I'm sure.
And then even at the hospital you have to have
a special test to see if it's actually that, and
not all the hospitals probably did that test, so they
(02:05):
probably just treated people for dehydration and diarrhea. So it's
a much bigger number than that. And let's talk about
what this thing is. Because it is a not a plant,
it's not a fungus or an animal. It's not a
bacteria or a virus. It is a protozoan and it's
a parasite and the human is the host.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, and it's not brand new. But the reason we
can pretty confidently say that in all of human history,
this is the biggest outbreak of cyclosporiasis. Is because the
first case that anyone's ever documented was in like nineteen
seventy eight in Papua New Guinea, and it's even newer
here in the United States. The first outbreak was in
(02:45):
nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Right, yeah, in Chicago, only twenty three cases. Then there
was one in Florida the next year, about forty five cases.
Those were raspberries from Guatemala. And every summer basically there's
a little something, but nothing like we saw this year.
They you know, this stuff can live. This protozoan can
live in rivers. It lives in water drinking water, rivers, lakes,
(03:08):
swimming pools, and it likes to hide in like berries
and leafy vegetables because there's lots of little crevices and
nooks and crannies where it won't get washed out even
if you're like rinsing your stuff. Also on knives and utensils,
and also from unwashed hands.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Gross very like just let's be clear. It passes through
human sewage. That's its mode of transportation, right, So that
means that somebody had human poop on their knife or
their hands, if that's where you got it.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, so we should talk about the life cycle because
it begins when it enters your mouth. It is in
what's earliest stage. It's an infectious o cyst. Did you
know how that's what was pronounced.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
That's the British way pronouncing it. I'm going with ossist.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
It is osis to actually look that up. And it
is an egg that basically protects it from the outside
world until it gets into the human system where it
latches onto your gut and starts a fourteen stage life cycle,
which takes two days to two weeks to incubate before
(04:25):
it becomes an infection.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yeah, and the reason it takes so long is because
that HSIs. Is that what you said?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, with emphasis on the first ooh ooh or osis
sorry o sist.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, like ooh ooh sis. It's very tough. It's like
a tough container like you said, that protects the actual
infectious part and it has to break down, and it's
evolved to break down in the human gut thanks to
your digestive juices and your bile and the temperature of
your body inside your gut, all those things come together
(04:59):
and break the oos this down, and now all of
a sudden, four sausage shaped spoiulets get dumped out into
your gut and start going to work and essentially making
it really hard for your gut to absorb water. And
because your body's trying to poop this stuff out, you
have water butt like you have never had it before.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
That's right. And every time you do poop, you pass
along up to ten thousand osis per cubic centimeter of feces.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
That's a lot ooey gooey. Theces it says, should we
take a break?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, all right, we'll be right back. Sweat shot shot stop,
(06:09):
all right, so we're back. You said, the main symptom
is really really bad diarrhea, which obviously was going to
lead to bad dehydration, like dangerous dehydration and electrolyte imbalances,
potential kidney damage, risk, maybe hospitalization. As we've seen up
to ten percent body weight weight loss.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
That's nuts.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
That's a lot, you know, depending on who you are.
But that's a lot no matter what, because it's ten
percent of whoever you are, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yeah, what's interesting is there's not an inflammation or fever
that's usually associated with a stomach bug. It's just a
lot of pooping and the risk of really bad dehydration
and then all the stuff that comes with that, right.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
So once you poop that stuff out, it makes it
back into the water supply, it gets back into your
food stuff we'll talk about in a second, and then
the cycle begins again. And that's probably what happened. The
water supply was used on food crops where really, if
you step back and think about it for even a second,
(07:14):
it shouldn't be. But let's talk about Chuck. Why this
US outbreak in twenty twenty six is the biggest one,
the biggest cyclist bariasis outbreak in human history.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, well, one is a climate change, you know, with
rising temperatures across the globe. These you know, I don't
think we mentioned that this thing used to be found
only in the tropics, right, but now these pathogens can
be found elsewhere because of rising temps. The second one,
and you know, we're not getting political, but this is
just a stone cold fact. This presidential administration is cut
(07:48):
funding for food safety programs, including two key ones that
might have stopped this the Food Emergency Response Network. They
grant states funding to test for food pathogens like this,
and food Net which track outbreak causing pathogens, and food
Nets specifically literally, because of a lack of funding, stopped
(08:08):
tracking six of the eight pathogens that it used to
always track, and cyclospora is one of those.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
So you know, that's just the deal.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Plus the federal agencies that are responsible for basically taking
the lead and guiding healthcare providers and public health officials
and all that stuff throughout the country just sat on
their hands for months. As a matter of fact, it
was about two full months before the CDC stepped forward
(08:40):
with guidelines and essentially basically really started talking about this publicly.
In the meantime, this outbreak was bad enough that somebody
had to do something. So Michigan ended up stepping forward
and filling the role that the CDC was just dropping
the ball on. They ended up issuing guidelines and stuff
that obviously weren't you know, regulations or anything, but that
(09:03):
other healthcare providers in other states were like, Okay, good,
now I know what to do thanks to the state
of Michigan, not the federal government, which is supposed to do.
And if you put all that together, you're like, wow,
this happened really fast, and to me, it gives a
picture of like the United States built a really impressive
(09:24):
food born illness surveillance network that was fragile apparently, but
that really worked because if you just pull that stuff
away and then this is the stuff that happens. I
think there's twenty food born outbreaks right now going on
in the United States. It's in a way, it's really
impressive how effective it was before.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, for sure, And boy, hats off to you Michiganers
for taking the lead on that. One of the other
big reasons is big agriculture. When it's you know, something
like that has been consolidated so much an industry has
that means that you know, Americans are getting their crops
from just you know, the same places basically, So if
(10:08):
something like this happens, like happened at Taylor Farms, this
was Tailor Farms to Mexico, which was the agricultural site,
even though it's a California based company, all of a sudden,
this stuff's going out all over the country. There's also
Tailor Farms is also being identified as a source of
the other outbreaks, a couple of them, the salmonilla outbreak,
(10:31):
at least from Jalapenos. I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Yeah, And for those who don't speak Spanish, Taylor farms
to Mexico means tailor farms of Mexico. So and it's
not just Mexico or Guatemala where you're going to find
tainted produce. Something I was kind of alluding to earlier
is that the cyclospora find its way finds its way
to your food crops through human sewage. And that can
(10:58):
actually happen in the United States because there are, let
me find it, more than half. I think twenty seven
states allow for treated sewage water to be used to
irrigate food crops.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I did not know that, I did neither. Nine states
don't have any policy, four have guidelines, and fourteen states
allow it for crops but not food crops. Yeah, and
you know, yeah, that's where it's coming from.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yes, so they and we did say treated sewage waste, yeah,
of course, right, So it's not like they're just spraying
like feces all over your lettuce, but essentially on a
microscopic level, they often are because a lot of sewage
treatment plants aren't set up to handle cyclospora. Because again,
this is not your average bacteria or virus. This is
(11:51):
its own thing. So thecites cysts can make it through
onto your your lettuce or whatever. And then also sometimes
those bacteria and the viruses that the sewage treatment plant
is set up to take care of make it through anyway.
So this is what I was saying. It seems pretty
(12:12):
smart to just stop using treated sewage on food crops.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, and maybe fund the agencies that are responsible for
keeping track of the stuff, would be AWES. Sure.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, So if you feel at all like you should
go to the hospital, if you have cyclo spiasis right now,
or if you have really bad water, but for any reason,
just go, like, don't risk it. Whatever. But if you
don't want to get cyclosporiasis, there are some steps you
can take. One of them is, at the very least
wash off all of your stuff, because that can help.
(12:45):
But cyclosporiasis can still hide, right Chuck.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah, I mean we talked in Act one about the
little nooks and crannies, and it's hard to get through.
Sometimes the only thing to kill it is to cook
it to one hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit. But you're
not cooking your let us for your taco.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
No, that's great. That's like the Mom and Better Off
Dead who boiled the bacon.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, that was a really silly part of that movie,
that whole mom's scene. Yeah. Stuff that's you know, like
stuff that has a nice wrapper around it, like a
banana and avocado. You're doing okay, and you know, do
plenty of handwashing obviously as well.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
For sure. And if you are on the vergeer, I've
already started an email telling us how you used to
like us before we became political. Just stop, don't bother short.
Stuff's out.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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