Here is a math problem no consumer should have to solve.
This summer, media reports built on state health department data point to nearly 2,000 cyclosporiasis cases nationwide. (source)
However, the CDC reports 145 cases acquired in the United States through June 16. (source) And the FDA reports it is investigating just two small outbreaks totaling 10 illnesses. (source)
Same parasite. Same season. Same country. Three numbers off from one another by orders of magnitude.
Michigan alone has now topped 700 confirmed cases — a state that ordinarily records about 50 in an entire year. Ohio has reported 177. New York more than 100. Yet the federal surveillance count sits at 145 because, as CDC is careful to explain, it's a snapshot through a cutoff date and doesn't yet treat these as one linked, multistate outbreak. No common source has been named. No recall has been issued.
The federal and state officials working these clusters are dedicated people chasing a parasite that hides from standard stool tests and is usually eaten and gone before anyone can trace it. I appreciate the role everyone is playing to understand and curtail these illnesses.
But step into a parent's shoes. They read that thousands are sick, then that the CDC counts 145, then that the FDA is looking at ten. What are they supposed to do with that? The honest answer is that no single entity has the whole picture — and that is the problem.
This is why Frank Yiannas is right.
Frank spent years inside the FDA as Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response (before that Walmart and Disney) — he architected the New Era of Smarter Food Safety, and when he left in 2023, he warned that the agency's fragmented structure was undermining its ability to protect the public. He laid out the specific case for an independent National Foodborne Outbreak Investigation Board in a November 2025 STAT First Opinion essay, written after a Listeria outbreak in prepackaged pasta meals killed six people — an outbreak whose original investigation failed to find the root cause, so the responsible company kept operating and kept making people sick for nearly half a year. His point was simple and damning: foodborne outbreaks are investigated by the very regulators who are supposed to prevent them, and with responsibility scattered across FDA, USDA, CDC, and the states, no single agency is truly accountable.
Modeled on the NTSB, the board Frank proposes would investigate outbreaks across every food category, free of agency silos and political pressure, and publish clear lessons so we stop repeating the same mistakes. He points to the contrast that ought to embarrass all of us: aviation accidents per mile flown have plummeted under independent NTSB investigation, while — by the CDC's own FoodNet data — the incidence of Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria has been flat or rising for two decades.
The GAO recently found that FDA and USDA's FSIS have missed their foodborne-illness-reduction goals, in one case by a wide margin. Foodborne illness still costs this country roughly $18 billion a year. And the confusion isn't new — in 2008, tomatoes were publicly blamed for a Salmonella outbreak later tied to peppers. Consumers were scared off, farmers were wiped out, and trust eroded. Sound familiar?
Frank has pressed the same case ever since — in a December 2025 expert roundtable on fixing the investigation system, and in a March 2026 piece arguing that FDA’s habit of redacting supply-chain names defeats the whole purpose of an investigation, the way an NTSB report blacked out line by line would teach the aviation industry nothing. His “Straight Talk” series this year — on ByHeart, on Nara Organics, and now on Cyclospora — is that same argument applied to the outbreaks in front of us.
I've spent more than 30 years representing the families behind these numbers, from the Jack in the Box children in 1993 to clients I'm counseling this week. I've long said my goal is to put myself out of business. An independent Board with the mandate to investigate across every food category, the authority to demand transparency, and the independence to speak plainly is one of the surest ways to get me there.
The Cyclospora discrepancy isn't a scandal. It's a symptom. The cure is timely, transparent reporting, stronger federal-state coordination, and one accountable body to pull it together.
Frank is right. It's time.
