New outbreak of explosive diarrhea parasite reported by FDA — with 72 cases and no known source

Seventy-two cases and the FDA still can't tell you what's causing it. That's the part worth sitting with for a second, not the gross-out headline about explosive diarrhea. Cyclosporiasis outbreaks almost always trace back to imported fresh produce, usually something like cilantro, basil, or berries from a handful of countries with looser water and sanitation standards on their farms. We've been here before, more than once, and the pattern is always the same: people get sick for weeks before anyone traces the source, if they ever do.

This isn't about xenophobia toward where our food comes from. It's about a food safety system that keeps discovering outbreaks after the fact instead of catching contamination before it reaches a grocery shelf. The FDA can put out a press release, but it can't inspect farms in another hemisphere the way it can inspect one in Iowa. That gap has been known for years and nobody in Washington has treated it like the actual public health risk it is.

If we want to keep buying cheap, out-of-season produce year-round, fine, that's a reasonable trade-off for consumers to make. But it should come with real traceability requirements and real consequences when a supplier's product keeps showing up in outbreak reports. Right now it mostly comes with a shrug and a case count that creeps up every few weeks. That's not a food safety system working as intended. That's a system that's decided some level of preventable illness is just the cost of convenience, and nobody elected to make that call on the public's behalf.