Rumors that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration cut public health tracking of an intestinal parasite that causes "explosive diarrhea" circulated in July 2026.
Social media users claimed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention altered a longstanding policy in 2025 that supported surveillance of cyclospora, a parasite that causes cyclosporiasis, a disease the CDC described as an infection of the small intestine that "usually causes watery diarrhea with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements." The infection is caused by the consumption of food or water contaminated by fecal matter.
The rumor circulated during an outbreak of thousands of cases of cyclosporiasis across the country.
Can't believe we have to say this, but please wash your hands.
In sum, the claim was true.
The CDC's website about FoodNet (archived) — described as a collaboration between the CDC, the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and 10 state health departments — that traditionally tracked infections from eight different pathogens, showed that as of July 1, 2025, reporting for all pathogens outside of salmonella and E. coli had been made optional.
Prior to this change, surveillance of cyclospora had been mandatory since 1997.
A disclaimer on the FoodNet website said that despite the change, FoodNet's purpose was "not designed to detect outbreaks of foodborne illness" and that "no recent changes have been made to how CDC and our federal, state, and local partners detect and investigate outbreaks through existing epidemiologic or laboratory systems."
(CDC)
Multiple media outlets reported the change in policy in August and September 2025, including The Associated Press, NBC News, The New York Times, Ars Technica and food-industry publication Food Safety News.
During the 2026 outbreak, the CDC website about surveillance of cyclospora (archived) stated:
Since May 1, 2026, CDC has received reports of 1,645 confirmed domestic cases of cyclosporiasis and is aware of more than 5,100 cases that require further analysis to confirm the illness as domestically acquired cyclosporiasis. So far this year, multiple states have reported an increase in cases compared to the same period in 2025.
The CDC responded to Snopes via email to confirm the change.
An agency representative shared a quote from Dr. Gwen Biggerstaff, deputy division director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases' Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases, taken from a briefing delivered to the media on July 14, 2026.
Biggerstaff said:
I'm really glad that gives me a chance to talk about the really fantastic, robust program of FoodNet and make the distinction between FoodNet and our general outbreak response and surveillance activities. So FoodNet is a robust program where the goal of the program is really to look at trends over time to inform our policy and prevention activities. There are only 10 participating FoodNet sites, so it doesn't really give us the same kind of data that we have from national surveillance, which is what we talked about using for cyclosporiasis surveillance and outbreak detection and response. The change that you mentioned for FoodNet essentially the change was that the FoodNet sites are no longer required to report FoodNet specific data for cases of cyclosporiasis.
Instead, they continue to participate in national surveillance, just like all of our other state and health department partners. So the data that we have for cyclosporiasis for this outbreak is the same as we've had for all of the other seasons. We use the same systems and the same processes. So that is unchanged.
Not included in the CDC's communication with Snopes but mentioned during the conference according the recording, Biggerstaff also said, "This is much much higher than what we've seen last year or the year before, and that's a big part of why we wanted to have this briefing today to share our concerns and what we do know, because it is a very big shift from what we've seen in previous seasons."
History of cyclospora
A 2023 CDC report, embedded below, described cyclospora as a "newly identified human gastrointestinal pathogen" discovered between 1993 and 1994.
"There remain significant knowledge and data gaps that hamper the implementation of effective measures to prevent the contamination of produce" by cyclospora, the report said, adding that while cyclosporiasis was "previously associated with international travel or consumption of contaminated imported foods," there had been an increase in cases associated with U.S.-grown produce.
The report showed the largest foodborne outbreak prior to 2026 was in 1996, when 1,465 cases were linked to raspberries from a Guatemalan farm.
The report said the first U.S-originated outbreak was linked to basil in 1997, the year FoodNet started reporting on cyclospora.
(CDC)
Snopes reached out to the Trump administration for comment on the outbreak and further data on whether the spread could be definitively linked to the changes in the FoodNet program. We will update this article if we learn more.