Health Secretary Kennedy says the cyclospora outbreak is under control after cutting the program that tracked it

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday that the multistate cyclospora outbreak is under control, telling reporters that extensive epidemiological forensics had identified the source and that the companies involved had implemented a recall. He made the comments during a briefing about healthcare fraud, in one of his first public statements on an outbreak the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been investigating for weeks.

The CDC has confirmed 1,645 cases across Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia, with no deaths reported. More than 5,100 additional illnesses remain under investigation and require further analysis before they can be counted as domestically acquired. Hospitalization figures are being reported inconsistently across outlets, ranging from 94 to 141, and the CDC has cautioned that state tallies are currently running ahead of the federal confirmed count because of reporting delays.

Federal investigators traced the illnesses to shredded iceberg lettuce served at some Taco Bell locations, supplied by Taylor Farms and sourced from central Mexico. Taylor Farms issued a voluntary recall on July 17 covering dozens of lettuce products across 27 states and said it will not source iceberg lettuce from central Mexico for the rest of the growing season. Taco Bell pulled the product from its restaurants.

What complicates Kennedy’s account is what happened the day before he gave it. Over the weekend the FDA announced that a sample of Taylor Farms shredded iceberg lettuce, one that was not part of the recall, had tested positive for the parasite. The agency then re-reviewed the result and determined it was a false positive. Taylor Farms responded publicly that the FDA had made a mistake. On Monday the FDA issued a clarification saying the revised finding does not change its investigation and that it still considers the recalled lettuce the likely source.

So when Kennedy said Tuesday that forensics had identified the source, his own agency had spent the previous 48 hours retracting the single laboratory detection it had announced. The epidemiological case linking the outbreak to those Taco Bell locations remains, built on where sick people reported eating rather than on a confirmed parasite in a tested sample. That is a normal and legitimate way to run a foodborne investigation. It is also a meaningfully weaker thing than what the phrase extensive forensics suggests.

The second half of Kennedy’s remarks addressed the criticism directly. Asked about complaints that federal funding cuts had gutted the systems used to catch outbreaks like this one, he said those criticisms are invalid. He said there were no cuts to the surveillance program, acknowledged that cuts were made to FoodNet, and characterized those as eliminating redundant surveillance while insisting the department is still doing forensics and surveillance in the space.

FoodNet is the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, a partnership between the CDC, the FDA, the Department of Agriculture and 10 state health departments. It stopped mandatory reporting for six of the eight pathogens it had tracked, cyclospora among them, following funding cuts. The CDC made cyclospora reporting optional in 2025.

That change is the practical reason the numbers in this outbreak are as unsettled as they are. When reporting on a pathogen is optional, the federal confirmed count depends on how quickly individual states volunteer their data, which is exactly the gap the CDC pointed to in explaining why state totals are outpacing its own. It is also a reasonable explanation for a backlog of more than 5,100 illnesses sitting in an unconfirmed category, and for the fact that two major outlets cannot agree on how many people have been hospitalized.

Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia sent Kennedy a letter accusing the administration of actively undermining food safety and describing the dismantling of public health programs as putting Americans at risk. He asked specifically why cyclospora tracking through FoodNet was terminated and whether the CDC has restored it.

There is a genuine argument on the other side of this that has nothing to do with staffing. Cyclospora is unusually difficult to trace because of its long incubation period, which can run a week or more between exposure and symptoms. By the time someone is sick enough to seek care and be tested, they are being asked to recall what they ate weeks earlier, and the contaminated product is often long gone from shelves. That would slow any traceback investigation regardless of how many people were working it, and it is a fair point in the department’s defense.

What is harder to square is the confidence of the language against the state of the evidence. A recall has been executed, product has been pulled from restaurants and stores across 27 states, and a supplier has committed to changing its sourcing for the season. Those are real containment steps and they support a claim that the exposure has been stopped. None of them settle how many people got sick, which is the number still moving, and the surveillance system that would settle it faster is the one Kennedy confirmed he cut.