Bad information leads to conspiracy theories around cyclospora outbreak.

Like other parasites, the protozoa Cyclospora cayetanensis has a mission to find a host, replicate then find new hosts. Cyclospora’s host is the human. Infection results in the nasty disease that can lead to days on the toilet and generally feeling like dirt. But one thing we have learned in the past week, while thousands of Americans are sick, is that we know remarkably little about cyclospora.

It is seasonal, with summer spikes. Cooking kills it, making raw fruits and vegetables prime suspects. It appears to need some amount of time outside its host to become infectious. But it only grows inside a human, making it impossible for scientists to culture it and experiment on loads of it, part of the difficulty in advancing research.

“There’s an awful lot we don’t know,” Jennifer McEntire, a microbiologist and founder of the firm Food Safety Strategy, LLC, based in the Washington, D.C. area, said on July 20. McEntire spoke on a video call hosted by California’s Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, an industry coalition that developed food safety protocols in the wake of the 2006 e. Coli outbreak in spinach that sickened 204 people and killed three.

Somewhere in the supply chain, something failed and thousands of Americans are now sick with cyclosporiasis, with the Michigan Department of Public Health reporting 6,571 confirmed cases as of July 21, including 102 hospitalizations.

“This is not one person who didn’t wash their hands. This is something much bigger,” according to McEntire.

How big remains unknown, weeks into a widespread outbreak. Instead of clarity, there’s finger-pointing and confusion.

Health officials interview patients trying to find common threads of what they ate; in this case, Taco Bell. Then comes tracing Taco Bell’s ingredients.

The true tragedy here is eroding trust in science.

On July 17, Salinas-based Taylor Farms announced that “based on information provided yesterday by the FDA, Taylor Farms de Mexico is voluntarily removing all iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico.”

Two days later, on Sunday, July 19, Taylor Farms posted a new statement: “Today, FDA apologized to us,” the company wrote. (The Weekly has been unable to verify whether that actually happened, and has been unable to reach anyone at Taylor or the FDA for an interview.) “FDA informed Taylor Fresh Foods that one of its iceberg lettuce products from central Mexico tested positive for cyclospora. Today, we were informed that FDA made a mistake, and this was a false positive.”

If a microbiologist like McEntire is needed to interpret these messages, the communicators at FDA and Taylor Farms are all failing.

Cyclospora is notoriously hard to test for and false positives are common, McEntire notes.

Meanwhile, in the information vacuum, people connect dots between facts. Yes, the company last year gave $1 million to the super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. and another $1 million to the right-wing Congressional Leadership Fund.

Cue the conspiracy theories all over the internet – was FDA capitulating to a perceived Trump ally? Unlikely.

Besides the thousands of sick Americans, the true tragedy here is eroding trust in science. Since the first cyclospora outbreak in the 1990s, relatively little is known. One of the few institutions doing research, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is facing cuts – a USDA lab where three parasitologists are studying improved testing is scheduled to close down, McEntire says. (Her own company lists just two “diamond level” contributors that have given $1 million or more – Western Growers Association and Taylor Farms.)

Taylor Farms does not benefit from thousands of sick Americans who are scared to eat salad, and none of us benefit from weak science. Too bad Taylor has thrown its political weight behind an agenda invested in gutting institutions that can safeguard its products and, more importantly, our health.

Meanwhile, nobody is talking to consumers directly about what’s safe. McEntire says unless you are in Michigan, it’s probably business as usual: Eat your salad.

She also worries that as patients recover, interest will wane. “Consumers should be pressing their elected officials to make sure attention continues to be paid to this,” she says, “and it doesn’t just fade as something else takes over.”

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com.