The spotlight on the Cyclosporiasis outbreak investigation has swiveled from state health departments to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency that could but hasn’t named the companies involved in growing, distributing, selling and serving tainted produce that has likely sickened 400 people in 16 states. Earlier this week, state health departments in Iowa and Nebraska, who have said for weeks that they believe their cases were linked, named pre-washed, bagged salad containing romaine and iceberg lettuces, carrots and red cabbage as the source of an outbreak that sickened 221 people in those states.
Neither state named the maker of the salad, the stores where is was sold or the restaurants where is was served. And health officials in Iowa said they had no plans to do so. “At this point, with the prepackaged salad mix no longer available to the public, we do not have that risk. Regarding the grower of the products, it will be up to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct the trace-back on the products’ origin. As the product was sold in interstate commerce, the FDA has jurisdiction,” David Werning, a public information officer for the office of inspections and appeals at the Iowa Department of Health, told Food Posioning Bulletin. So far, the FDA has been mum about the source.
This isn’t the first time federal agencies have witheld the name sof a company associated with an outbreak. In 2012, the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) associated a Salmonella outbreak with “a Mexican-style fast food restaurant chain,” referred to only as “Restaurant Chain A” in all of its published information. After two weeks of pressure from food safety advocates and publications, this one included; and “it wasn’t us” oaths from a string of Mexican-style fast food restaurants who suffered collectively as possible “Restaurant As,” Taco Bell revealed itself as the mystery chain.
The same thing is happening now. Food safety advocates are saying the public has a right to know and agriculture spokespeople from Iowa, Nebraska and California have all come forward to sat “we didn’t grow it.”
But the FDA and the CDC haven’t yet signed on to the idea that bagged salad is the source of illness for all of the reported cases. All along, state and federal officials have said that the 400 cases reported from 16 states may not be part of the same outbreak. The agencies are still looking for “common exposures” among those ill, a challenge that becomes steeper as time passes. The earliest onset of illness was mid-June, meaning those people ate something that made them sick at the end of May or beginning of June. Most of us would be hard pressed to remember in detail what we ate two months ago.
The FDA “has dedicated a seven person team at the headquarters level to solving this outbreak, and will augment this team as needed. Additionally, there are FDA specialists across the country in 10 field offices working on the outbreak.”
The agency has also “prioritized the ingredients of the salad mix identified by Iowa and Nebraska for the traceback investigation, but is following other leads as well. In the traceback process, the traceback team identifies clusters of people made ill in separate geographic areas and works to trace the path of food eaten by those made ill to a common source. This is labor intensive and painstaking work, requiring the collection, review and analysis of hundreds and at times thousands of invoices and shipping documents.”
Strangely, the length of this investigation rivals the duration of illness for Cyclospora, which can last an average of 57 days. So, the people who became ill in early June could still be experiencing symptoms that include explosive diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, bloating, gassiness, abdominal cramps, weight loss, loss of appetite, low-grade fever, fatigue and malaise. And possibly dehydration which is characterized by sunken eyes, a dry mouth and tongue, reduced urine output and tear production.
