Column: Cyclospora outbreak is a wake-up call for food safety

You might want to come back to this after you've finished eating your breakfast. Today, we're talking parasites. Cyclospora, to be exact, the pain-in-the-gut bug that's lately been causing a lot of acute intestinal distress.

The numbers started rising in late June. As of Friday, the Centers for Disease Control had tallied a total of 514 cases of cyclospora infection in 17 states, including 153 cases in Iowa.

Health officials in Iowa and Nebraska -- the two states that, aside from Texas, have recorded the highest number of cases -- believe they've traced the tropical bug to salad grown in Mexico and served at Olive Gardens and Red Lobsters. No other state has determined a cause, so it's not yet clear if or how the other cases might be related. Still, this should be a wake-up call concerning the high stakes of food safety protections in this modern age.

Thanks to consolidation in agriculture and food production, contaminated food can travel farther, faster than ever before. It also can be harder to trace. According to the CDC, before 1996, there were few U.S. cases of cyclosporiasis -- most were international travelers who had gone abroad and brought the bug back home. Since then, there have been several outbreaks in the United States, with imported produce to blame.

Rare as it may be, this isn't the largest cyclospora outbreak we've seen. Still, the geographic spread is noteworthy, with confirmed cases in Florida, Wisconsin, Illinois, Arkansas, New York, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Hampshire and New Jersey. We'll probably never know for certain whether this outbreak can be traced back to a single source.

In recent news stories, CDC officials have said with better technology, they'd be better able to track outbreaks and quickly stop them. That might be a good idea, but it's not enough.

According to the Associated Press, the same plant that processed salads implicated in the Iowa and Nebraska outbreak processed 48 million servings of salad for thousands of Midwestern and Eastern restaurants in June. That's a lot of greens, most of which, it should be noted, passed through our food supply system without a hiccup.

But a lot, nevertheless. And a good reminder that we need strong protections to keep contaminated food from circulating in the first place.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net