CDC narrowed mandatory FoodNet pathogen surveillance from eight diseases to two as it dissolved its parasitic-disease division

Effective July 1, 2025, CDC narrowed mandatory reporting under FoodNet, its foodborne-disease surveillance collaboration with ten state health departments covering roughly 54 million people, from eight tracked pathogens down to two -- Salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli. Reporting on the other six, Campylobacter, Cyclospora, Listeria, Shigella, Vibrio, and Yersinia, became optional rather than mandatory. Internal CDC/HHS talking points sent to state health departments said "funding has not kept pace with resources required to maintain FoodNet surveillance for all eight pathogens," and CDC separately described the change as letting FoodNet staff "prioritize core activities."

The same year, CDC dissolved its Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria, the office that held the agency's expertise on malaria, neglected tropical diseases, and parasitic foodborne infections including Cyclospora. Remaining staff were reassigned to other parts of the agency. Neither the FoodNet narrowing nor the division's dissolution went through Congress; both were executive-branch decisions made amid the Trump administration's broader 2025 restructuring of HHS under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Public health researchers, including Craig Hedberg (University of Minnesota), J. Glenn Morris (University of Florida), and Barbara Kowalcyk (George Washington University), publicly disputed the adequacy of CDC's funding rationale and warned the cuts would leave the country more vulnerable to undetected outbreaks.

Updates

2026-08-03 — Cyclospora outbreak traced to Taylor Farms lettuce grew to 45 states, 6,700+ confirmed cases, and two deaths in Michigan [7]

A multistate cyclospora outbreak that began in spring 2026 became the largest on record, surpassing the prior 2019 case record. By early August 2026, CDC and state health departments had confirmed more than 6,700 domestically acquired cases across 45 states, with over 11,500 additional cases awaiting confirmation; Michigan, the hardest-hit state, reported the outbreak's first two deaths, both patients with underlying health conditions. FDA and CDC later tied the outbreak to iceberg lettuce distributed by Taylor Farms de Mexico. Colorado, a FoodNet participating state, had cut back its own cyclospora monitoring following the 2025 federal funding change and was independently experiencing its own outbreak. Rep. Greg Stanton and other members of Congress pressed HHS in July 2026 for an accounting of what, if anything, replaced FoodNet's narrowed surveillance.