– OPINION –
Families do not eat promises. They eat food placed before them today, trusting that the people responsible for its safety have done their work before it reaches the table.
That is why FDA’s latest commitments to prevent Cyclospora outbreaks deserve both support and scrutiny. After an outbreak linked to Taylor Farms de Mexico iceberg lettuce was associated with 12,883 reported illnesses, 570 hospitalizations, and two deaths, FDA announced a series of planned activities ahead of the 2027 growing and harvesting season. They include stronger surveillance, expanded laboratory capacity, expert panels, and increased foreign supplier verification inspections.
This direction is welcome. The question is whether this promise of readiness will become timely action—or follow earlier food safety protections down a long path from promise to implementation.
Federal efforts to strengthen produce safety long predate this outbreak. Congress considered the Fruit and Vegetable Safety Act (S.823), addressing processed produce, in 1999 and the broader Fresh Produce Safety Act (S.2077) in 2007 - years before the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) became law in 2011.
FDA finalized the Produce Safety Rule in 2015, and it took effect on January 26, 2016. Yet implementation of some important protections has stretched much further.
Agricultural water is one example. In 2017, FDA moved to extend agricultural-water compliance dates while reconsidering standards that had generated concerns about complexity, feasibility, and practicality. FDA ultimately revised the pre-harvest agricultural-water requirements in 2024. Under the current schedule, very small covered farms have until April 5, 2027, to comply with those requirements.
For that group, the deadline comes more than 11 years after the Produce Safety Rule took effect and 16 years after FSMA became law – not to ignore the nearly three decades since earlier produce-safety legislation was introduced. While this history includes legitimate regulatory revision and phased compliance, it still demonstrates the distance that can stand between promising prevention and fully implementing it.
Traceability offers another lesson. FDA’s Food Traceability Rule originally carried a January 20, 2026, compliance date. FDA proposed a 30-month extension, and Congress subsequently prohibited enforcement before July 20, 2028. Responsibility for that delay therefore extends across both agency and congressional action.
Traceability helps investigators follow contaminated food through the supply chain and remove it faster. Water controls and traceability operate at different points, but both serve the same responsibility: protecting people before more of them become patients.
FDA’s own economic analysis acknowledges benefits forgone when traceability implementation is postponed. Delay has consequences alongside the implementation costs it postpones.
This history does not prove FDA’s new Cyclospora commitments will be delayed. Reports, inspections, laboratory improvements, and expert panels operate differently from rulemaking. FDA also has an existing Cyclospora action plan documenting completed work in areas including training, laboratory capacity, surveillance, international cooperation, and research.
But the history explains why the public deserves more than a list of intentions.
FDA’s public description of the ten commitments generally does not provide numerical targets, commitment-specific deadlines, or clear public measures of success. Those details may exist internally. Publishing them would allow consumers, industry, and policymakers to judge whether prevention is actually improving.
We teach leaders to make goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Public prevention commitments deserve the same discipline.
How much will surveillance increase? Which laboratories will gain capacity? How much faster should results become available? When will supplier-verification findings be reported? How will FDA determine whether corrective actions worked?
Activity is not the same as protection.
A training session can occur without changing practice. An inspection can be completed without demonstrating that corrective measures remain effective. Accountability should measure not simply what government and industry did, but whether risk was reduced.
Accountability must reach beyond FDA
FDA cannot carry this responsibility alone.
Congress has a role in implementation, oversight, and resources. Growers, processors, importers, and retailers must demonstrate that their controls work. FDA’s September 2026 letter to industry already emphasizes existing responsibilities involving agricultural water, sanitation, worker health and hygiene, and supplier verification.
The next growing season should not become another reason to postpone those responsibilities.
FDA should publish a schedule for each commitment, identify responsible offices and necessary resources, report progress against measurable targets, and explain missed milestones. Industry should demonstrate that required controls are not merely documented but effective. Congress should provide the resources and oversight necessary for timely implementation.
Before the next growing season, the public should be able to answer a simple question: What is different now, and what evidence shows that people are safer because of it?
Families do not need another promise of prevention.
They need prevention demonstrated before food reaches the table.
About the author: Darin Detwiler is a food safety academic, author, advisor, and advocate whose work focuses on food safety leadership, policy, accountability, and the human consequences of failures in the food system. A frequent contributor to Food Safety News, he appears in the Emmy Award-winning Netflix documentary Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food. He has spent decades working to advance stronger food safety protections and to ensure that the experiences of consumers and families remain central to decisions about food safety.
