The claim is a flat one and it is checkable. 'We've had no cuts in our surveillance program,' Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said [1].
Start with the parasite team. CDC's food-parasite tracking staff went from 11 scientists to 3 [1].
Then the surveillance network itself. Effective July 1, 2025, FoodNet narrowed from eight tracked pathogens to two - salmonella and E. coli. Cyclospora, a parasite carried on fresh produce, was dropped entirely [1].
Around it: the national advisory committee on microbial contamination was disbanded. The joint US-Mexico food-safety team, which works the border most winter produce crosses, was eliminated. FDA is down about 20 percent of staff and CDC about 25 percent [1].
Each of those is a cut, and the last three are cuts to the specific machinery that finds contaminated food.
What makes the timing hard to look at is what is happening while the network is smaller. More than 11,000 illnesses have been reported across 41 states since May. Tied to iceberg lettuce grown by Taylor Farms de Mexico: 1,947 lab-confirmed cases and 98 hospitalisations [2].
Susan Mayne ran FDA food safety from 2015 to 2023, and does not hedge: 'an astonishingly large outbreak, record-setting outbreak' [1].
A produce outbreak, in the year the produce parasite came off the tracking list.
