– opinion –
On July 14, Senator Amy Klobuchar sent a letter to the acting directors of the CDC and FDA requesting that they restore food safety programs halted by the Trump administration and begin tracking foodborne illnesses again. She named them FoodNet, Food Emergency Response Network, Food Safety Inspection Services, Public Health Infrastructure Grant, and Prevention Services Block Grant. I’ve represented the people those programs protect for 30 years, and let me be clear: she’s right, and everyone who eats should get behind her.
Here’s what she points to: Last year, the administration reduced FoodNet’s tracking of 10 foodborne pathogens to two. Cyclospora, a parasite currently sweeping the country, was one of eight stopped tracking. Reporting has become optional. The FDA’s Food Emergency Response Network was suspended after scientists were laid off, and grants that paid for state lab capacity and disease tracking also ended. Her letter concluded with one sentence: The problem is that there is no longer a central place to report and compare this data across state lines.
A word about numbers, because they make her case stronger than her letters. She notes that as of July 9, the Cyclospora outbreak has resulted in nearly 2,800 cases and 86 hospitalizations. This figure is already old and low. As I write this, the CDC has 1,645 confirmed cases and has acknowledged that it is aware of more than 5,100 people (nearly 7,000 people) under investigation. There are 3,762 in Michigan alone. Add in the 11 states that still release their own counts, and the number rises to more than 4,900.
That’s the whole argument. The senator could only cite “nearly 2,800” because the system for calculating the remainder had been canceled. The distance between her phone number and your actual phone number is evidence of, not a weakness in her letter. If we stop tracking pathogens, not a single sick person will become healthy. You lose the ability to see them. People are still out there. Children and grandparents who have been dehydrated for weeks from a single bag of salad greens are now invisible to the one organization we expect to raise the alarm.
I’ve seen this before. I started after the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak in 1993, and the biggest improvements since then have been our ability to detect outbreaks early, link cases across state lines, and bring in contaminated food before it kills people. These capabilities are all implemented in the program in Klobuchar’s letter. Take them away and we are worse off than we were in 1993. Food supplies are larger and more national than ever, and a lot of contaminated vegetables can reach dozens of states before anyone connects the first two cases.
Yes. I support her request without warning. Restores FoodNet, the Food Emergency Response Network, Food Safety Inspection Services, Public Health Infrastructure Grants, and Prevention Services Block Grants. Put Cyclospora back on the list of things this country can’t afford to count. Do so now while the outbreak is still increasing. Because the alternative is what we live with. The gap is widening when the agency reports 1,645 people, the reality is closer to 7,000, where real people are sick and no one in Washington needs to notice.
Senator Klobuchar is asking the right questions. The rest of us must not let that question go unanswered.
