It’s not just a gut feeling: Foodborne illness outbreaks are especially bad this summer

Deciding which veggie to throw in the cart or what to pick from the lunch menu rarely feels as high stakes as it has this summer, with recalls and foodborne illnesses capturing headlines.

The concern is valid: Federal data suggests that this is a particularly bad summer for foodborne illness outbreaks in the US. And challenges around tracing the sources of outbreaks and capturing their full scope can leave many questions unanswered.

Between 2021 and 2025, the US Food and Drug Administration investigated an average of about 25 foodborne illness outbreaks each year. This year, the agency has already posted 20 investigations and says work remains active for 18 foodborne illness clusters.

The FDA posted a dozen foodborne illness outbreak investigations within the past two months alone.

Summer is typically peak season for foodborne illness, but there haven’t been this many outbreaks in this short of a timeframe at any other point over the past five years at least.

This summer has seen a confluence of challenges, including excessive heat that allows food contamination to grow and a pathogen that’s particularly tough to pin down. Federal funding cuts under the Trump administration that reduced budgets both for food inspections by federal agencies and for grants to state and local health departments that conduct the traceback investigations to determine where the outbreaks come from.

“We’re seeing the public health system tested right now as it relates to foodborne illness,” said Dr. Manisha Juthani, president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

The number of outbreak investigations “represents an increase from previous years,” the FDA said in an email to CNN.

“The FDA is constantly working to improve laboratory detection of foodborne illness, and these strengthened surveillance efforts often lead to increased detection,” the agency said. “Ensuring the safety of the food supply is a shared responsibility among many different points in the global supply chain. All stakeholders must actively participate in food safety efforts, as foodborne illness outbreaks affect both consumers and the entire industry.”

Cases accumulate quickly

The current active investigations involve the four most common pathogens involved in outbreaks over the past five years: cyclospora, E. coli, listeria and salmonella.

Food safety experts say that the accumulation of outbreaks this summer is striking but that tracking the number of outbreaks — or recalls, for that matter — isn’t the best way to capture the risk from foodborne pathogens.

One recall can often apply to multiple different products that were available at a variety of stores or restaurants.

“It’s not really incorporating the severity and impact,” said Darin Detwiler, a food safety advocate and former professor of food policy and corporate social responsibility at Northeastern University.

“We need to measure these five things: severity, frequency, scale, public health burden and systems performance. Are the same preventable failures recurring despite regulations intended to stop them?”

A much better gauge is the number of illnesses associated with outbreaks, they say. But it may not make you feel any better: The US is on track to have one of its worst years yet.

There have been about 10,500 cases of foodborne illness associated with outbreaks so far this year, according to data from the FDA and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s seven times higher than the annual average of about 1,500 cases between 2021 and 2025.

The vast majority of illnesses this year are from the cyclosporiasis outbreak involving iceberg lettuce used at restaurants like Taco Bell and distributed more broadly by Taylor Farms. At least 9,481 illnesses have been linked to that outbreak in 17 states as of Thursday — more illnesses than there have been from all outbreaks over the past four years combined — and there are thousands more under investigation. It’s the largest cyclosporiasis outbreak on record in the US and one of the largest foodborne illness outbreaks overall.

But foodborne illnesses from other outbreaks are accumulating quickly, too.

There have been more than 1,000 cases of illness associated with outbreaks beyond the cyclospora outbreak so far in 2026, FDA data shows. With nearly four months left in the year, this puts the US on track to surpass the average annual case count from the past five years — in addition to the massive cyclospora outbreak.