Fifteen Letters, and the First From Both Chambers: Twenty-Five Democrats Tell USDA to Stop Closing Its Cyclospora Lab at Beltsville. CDC Has Stopped Counting Weekly. The Answers Are Not In, and There Is Still No Hearing.

On September 17, Representative Rosa DeLauro and twenty-four other Democrats in the House and Senate wrote to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins asking USDA to stop closing the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center and to put its Cyclospora research back to work. It is the fifteenth congressional letter on the 2026 outbreak, the second to USDA in four days, and the first signed by members of both chambers. DeLauro’s announcement names seven lawmakers; the letter itself carries twenty-five signatures, seventeen from the House and eight from the Senate, including Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. That makes six House letters, eight Senate letters and one from both, all from Democrats. I last wrote about the letters on September 15. As of this afternoon I still cannot find a published answer to any of them.

The letter says the outbreak has sickened nearly 20,000 people. CDC’s case data put it at 19,883 laboratory-confirmed domestic cases for the May 1 to August 31 season, with 1,064 hospitalizations and two deaths in forty-nine states and the District of Columbia, as of September 15. CDC says that was its last weekly update; the page will now change only periodically. On September 11 CDC declared the outbreak over with 12,883 illnesses tied to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico. That leaves exactly 7,000 confirmed cases this season with no food named. FDA says its investigation continues. Where those 7,000 people picked up the parasite is a research question, and research is what this letter is about.

What the fifteenth letter adds

The fourteenth letter, from Representative Debbie Dingell and nine House colleagues, asked whether USDA would seek the congressional approval its reorganization requires. The fifteenth goes after the Department’s explanation. USDA told Politico, in a statement Reuters carried, that Congress did not fund two of the three Beltsville Cyclospora projects for fiscal 2026 and that none of the research has been disrupted. The members write that Congress ended that funding on technical advice from USDA that the researchers would stay at Beltsville and that the Department would keep their expertise without ending its Cyclospora work. That is the members’ account. USDA has not published one.

On the third project, which is still funded, the letter relies on Politico’s reporting that the scientists declined orders to move to Iowa, leaving no dedicated USDA staff to study the parasite. It asks five questions: whether all the Beltsville Cyclospora staff have declined to relocate and whether anyone has been hired to replace them; how many other projects will lose scientists; how USDA will keep the research uninterrupted; where the work will go and whether the receiving labs can handle it; and whether USDA will ship highly pathogenic organisms across the country, and how safely.

The members write that USDA has spent more than $170 million upgrading and repairing Beltsville since 2016, including a $32 million renovation of its food safety laboratory finished in 2022, and that the Agricultural Research Service receives more than $1.8 billion a year. They ask USDA to stop the closure and halt the reorganization. Unlike the Dingell letter, which asked for answers within two weeks, this one sets no date. It asks for a timely response.

Why it matters

For two months I have written that the letters asked about surveillance cuts, political influence and the recall, and that none of the first thirteen asked how to keep the next outbreak from happening. Two letters in four days now do. There is no whole genome sequencing for this parasite. CDC links cases by genotyping, and used it in this outbreak to show the parasites making people sick were genetically related. That science does not maintain itself.

In July, Secretary Rollins told a Hill audience that cyclosporiasis is an FDA issue, not a USDA one. On outbreak response that is mostly right. On research it is not, and two letters have now gone to the department that holds the bench.

Here is the whole list, updated. The column on the right is still the one to read.

I believe that is every letter and I am not certain it is. I have had to add letters after publishing before. No answer found means exactly that and nothing more; an agency can answer a member privately, and neither side has to publish it. If you have an answer to any of these, send it and I will correct this post.

The fix is in the next funding bill

USDA blames the fiscal 2026 appropriations law; the members say Congress acted on USDA’s own advice. Either way, the repair runs through one place. The November 2025 law that ended the shutdown carries both the Beltsville funding decision and Section 780, which bars FDA from spending money to administer or enforce the food traceability rule before July 20, 2028. Fiscal 2027 begins October 1, and the letter says Democrats are ready to build on existing Cyclospora research in the final funding agreement. Congress can restore the research and lift the traceability delay in that bill. Neither fix needs a letter. The Beltsville reversal does not even need Congress; the members write that it is wholly within the Secretary’s power to do immediately.

Still no hearing

Eight dated deadlines have passed without a published answer, the last on August 27. The Dingell letter’s two weeks run out around September 28, and the DeLauro letter set none. No committee has noticed a hearing. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which held a hearing on Cyclospora in imported raspberries in July 1998, can issue a subpoena; Senator Blumenthal wrote as its ranking member, and a ranking member cannot subpoena alone. The House Oversight majority can adopt Representative Garcia’s document request as the committee’s own. The Agriculture Committees oversee USDA, and the appropriators fund all three agencies. Twenty-five members signed the newest letter, and none of them holds a gavel. Every one of those tools belongs to the majority.

CDC has stopped counting weekly. Fifteen letters have put them in writing, and not one has a published answer. If a letter will not put anyone in a chair, a subpoena to a hearing will.