The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has put out a short factsheet with a title I wish I had written: Food Safety Begins Upstream: What Cyclospora outbreaks remind us about food and water safety across agrifood systems. It runs four pages. Anyone who grows, packs, ships, buys or regulates fresh produce should read all four.
The timing is hard to miss. This summer the United States lived through the largest Cyclospora outbreak on record. By the time FDA closed its investigation in early October, the outbreak had been linked to more than 12,800 cases across 21 states, with hundreds hospitalized and two deaths in Michigan. CDC declared the outbreak over in September. FDA found strong evidence tying the illnesses to recalled shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico.
Here is the part that matters for this post. FDA collected two environmental samples that tested positive for Cyclospora. One came from a tank holding outgoing wastewater from the processing facility. The other came from a drainage ditch at an iceberg lettuce farm. FDA said it did not have enough evidence to say conclusively how the contamination happened, but that the positives showed the parasite was present in the environment where the lettuce was grown and processed. Taylor Fresh Foods responded that the grower is no longer in its supplier program and that the facility sample came from discharged waste and sewer water outside its plant.
Wastewater. A ditch. Now read the FAO factsheet.
What the FAO says
The FAO makes four points that every produce buyer should tape to the wall.
First, Cyclospora is a human-only parasite. Animals are not reservoirs. If it is on your lettuce or in your water, it got there from human feces. That makes this a problem of sanitation, wastewater and hygiene, not wildlife or neighboring cattle.
Second, once produce is contaminated, washing will not save you. The FAO notes that routine washing does not reliably remove the oocysts and that commonly used chlorine-based sanitizers do not reliably kill them. Cooking works. But nobody cooks shredded iceberg on a taco.
Third, water touches food at more points than most people think. The FAO lists mixing agricultural inputs like pesticide sprays, irrigation, harvesting, washing, cooling, cleaning and processing. Every one of those is a door Cyclospora can walk through if the water has been contaminated with untreated or poorly treated human sewage.
Fourth, and this is the title, prevention must happen before harvest. For foods eaten raw, once the parasite is on the leaf there is very little anyone downstream can do about it.
What the FAO says to do
The recommendations are practical. Governments should map where water enters food production and focus on the higher risk uses and sources, with water standards matched to how the water is used. Farms should provide toilets and handwashing stations for workers, place and maintain them away from fields and water sources, and train workers on hygiene. Laboratories need better methods to detect Cyclospora in food, water and soil, including tests that can tell live, infectious parasites from leftover DNA. And food safety, public health, water and agriculture agencies need to share information faster during outbreaks, including across borders when the supply chain starts in another country.
None of that is exotic. It is toilets, clean water, testing and talking to each other.
My take
I have been doing this for more than thirty years, and the pattern does not change. We spend our energy at the end of the chain on recalls, advisories and lawsuits, after people are sick. The FAO is right that the cheaper, smarter and more humane place to spend it is at the beginning.
Right now, as we noted in our Cyclospora Q&A, no law requires a farm to test its irrigation water or its produce for Cyclospora. Buyers can require it. Big buyers, the ones purchasing millions of pounds of shredded lettuce for restaurant chains, have the leverage to demand sanitation audits, water testing and worker facilities at every farm and packing house in their supply chain, whether that farm is in California, Arizona or Guanajuato. The FAO and WHO have been publishing guidance on this for years, including a 2021 report on the safety and quality of water used with fresh fruits and vegetables. The science is not the problem. The will is.
Twelve thousand eight hundred sick people is what happens when we treat water and sanitation as someone else’s job. As the FAO put it, food safety begins upstream. It is time the produce industry acted like it.
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