Everything You Need To Know About The Cyclospora Outbreak: A Microbiologist Answers YOUR Questions

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, there, everybody, and welcome to this episode of Amy and DJ. We are gonna dive in deeply about the story everybody is talking about. We're gonna give you everything you need to know about this cyclost Sphora outbreak, and not because we have all the answers, but we actually brought in an expert to answer not only our questions, but some of the questions that you all gave to us through social media. And there were a plenty and really interesting questions that I'm actually desperate to know the answer to it.

00:00:33
Speaker 2: I got tons, I'm serious, I got tons of questions about this.

00:00:36
Speaker 3: Yes, should we introduce our guest.

00:00:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's her dad first.

00:00:40
Speaker 4: Hey, the farmer Robach, Yes, Microbock a microbiologists who spent an entire career, entire career dealing with food safety. Any question you have about a food borne illness and food safety. He absolutely is the expert. Maybe not the Hey, he's in the world, he's a leading Yeah.

00:01:00
Speaker 2: Se he's in the room for this.

00:01:01
Speaker 4: So Papa Robot, good to see you, kind sir, coming to us from Georgia and the home.

00:01:05
Speaker 2: So we're going to get right into this once.

00:01:07
Speaker 1: You get first, Yes, Okay, so we've got so many questions. Should we do our questions first and then our listeners question?

00:01:13
Speaker 4: Can I ask this Papa Robot? First of all, you you've dealt with a lot of stuff. What is your reaction when you hear how concerned are you when you just hear of an outbreak and it's cyclospora?

00:01:26
Speaker 5: Well, uh, cyclospora is a it's a parasite. It's not a bacteria, you know, And mainly we've dealt with bacteria salmon, la e Coli, Listeria, things like that, So cyclospora is a parasite. The good news is it's usually a self limiting disease. That means that you may feel like you're gonna die, but you won't. You're you're going to get really sick, you know. I think the press has been playing around with the then explosive diarrhea, you know, because that obviously gets people to click, you know, so explosive, and it is it is It is explosive. No, I mean, it's a it's a reasonable moniker for the symptoms. But so when when I hear it, I mean, I feel bad for the people that have it, but it's very unlikely to kill you. You do have to be concerned with young folks and the elderly that they don't get dehydrated, because if you do get overly dehydrated, that can cause a more serious syndrome. So for most people, most most healthy folks, it it will, it will take care of itself. Now you can be treated with antibiotics too. There are plenty of antibiotics out there, so it's a treatable disease if you will.

00:02:59
Speaker 1: All right, Dad, I know this is a gross question, but I have to ask you because you brought up explosive and I think TJ might have said this to me the other day.

00:03:06
Speaker 3: Isn't all diarrhea explosive?

00:03:08
Speaker 4: It was actually my first question, Papa Robuck. I want to ask you, but I just I wanted to. I didn't want to leave with that. So that is a question. What does it mean when your diarrhea is explosive? That's not a joke. And this might be a thing to you know if you have it, But what's the difference.

00:03:24
Speaker 5: It means that the organism is as it's growing in your intestinal track, it's creating a lot of gas, and some organisms create more gas than others, and this this parasite produces a lot of gas, so hence the term explosion.

00:03:45
Speaker 2: Thank you. Nobody is explaining that that makes sense. Thank you.

00:03:49
Speaker 1: All right. So look, we know that this doesn't typically almost hardly ever, transmits from person to person, so we don't know. They're saying right now at this point that they believe lettuce could be the source of this particular outbreak, this parasitic outbreak, but without any specificity as to what kind of lettuce, where the lettuce is coming from. Is it going to get worse before it gets better these numbers that we're seeing thousands of people impacted.

00:04:20
Speaker 5: Yes, I think the numbers will get worse before they get better, because, as you pointed out, people haven't identified a specific source. The latest word out of Michigan is that they believe lettuce or salad greens are behind the outbreak, and they've got over twenty six hundred illnesses in the state of Michigan alone. They're leading the pack right now. And the issue is that it can take up to two weeks before you exhibit symptoms, so it's a long incubation period. You know, some bugs, like if you get a staff orious infection, you know, in about six to eight hours if you get salmonella, it's you know, forty eight to seventy two hours, So you know, two weeks is a long time, and so people forget their food histories. What did I eat? You know, when could I have been infected? Plus, if there's something like lettuce or salad, greens or some of the other foods associated with cyclospora, you usually don't eat those as a as a main entree or something. It's usually mixed with something else. So people get a little confused. You know, gee, I had a salad, but man, was it the salad? I don't know? Or was it the tomatoes? Where did it was raspberries? Was it cilantro? Was it basil? These are products that have been associated with cyclospora. Now, Amy, you said it can't it's not past human to human. It can be because this travels that famed fecal oral route you too growing up, right, So you could if someone were ill with cyclospora and have a bout of explosive diarrhea, if they weren't thorough in their personal hygiene, they could spread that organism.

00:06:19
Speaker 3: Especially and they prepare food.

00:06:22
Speaker 5: Especially if they prepared food exactly, so it's not as readily transferable, as you know some bacteria are. However, it can be transferred.

00:06:33
Speaker 4: That's a very important note because so much has been said about that that it can't be past human human. That's a good note for people to at least keep in mind. Can you tell me how likely it is given your background? When you hear it's possibly salad or lettuce greens, do you hear that and go that reads or you go eh, maybe.

00:06:53
Speaker 5: Not, No, that's uh let us salad greens one of the primary any suspects always with a Cyclospora outbreak. It's usually associated with poor field hygiene, so when the products being harvested, it can be easily contaminated by the folks that are out out there picking the crop. A lot of times these places don't have adequate hygiene facilities on the farm. So, yeah, it is. It is one of the usual suspects when you have a cyclospora outbreak.

00:07:36
Speaker 1: All right, we've got some listener questions for you, dad. This one comes from Eshaw twenty seven. How do you test for it?

00:07:44
Speaker 5: There are tests so that you can identify the organism. Right now, they're doing a lot of genetic testing looking at the genetic makeup of the bug, but they have positively identified it as cyclosport, so there are molecular techniques that we can use. This was not the case, you know, years ago, because people weren't they weren't interested in cycles for Probably a lot of people never studied cyclist for. But as the produce industry has grown, as we've had more national distribution or international distribution of produce products, people have become more and more interested in cyclus for because it is a it's kind of an emerging threat, if you will.

00:08:30
Speaker 4: I haven't looked through the whole list, but this might be the most important question that everybody has. This is from Courtney Staley says, is there any way to clean the fruits and vegetables so that you can feel safe about eating them?

00:08:42
Speaker 5: And the answer is yes, you can if you're buying if you're buying lettuce, you the suggestion is that you buy whole heads of whole heads of lettuce, and then you go ahead and discard the outer leaves and then thoroughly wash what's left. So yeah, you can rinse this off. I mean you can wash the inner leaves under clean running water to a point where you will remove the parasite or most of the parasites you'll probably get below an infectious dose if you do that properly. You should also and that goes for not just let us, but also cilantro, basil, snow peas, raspberries. They're the ones that have been linked to outbreaks in the past. So you've got bag salads and mixes, you've got fresh cilantro, fresh basil, raspberries, and snow peas. They're the ones that have been associated with previous outbreaks.

00:09:47
Speaker 1: All right, so wash all of those this I thought this next one was interesting. CUPPEEV asked, what about ordering salads and restaurants?

00:09:58
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, yeah, you you are, you are. You are relying on you know, the sioux chef and the preparatory folks in the back of the house that they're practicing good hygiene and that they're washing, uh, the the lettuce and the salads appropriately and handling them appropriately. So you wouldn't order anytime you go to a red restaurant. You're relying on them to cook your food properly, you know, and to handle it properly.

00:10:31
Speaker 1: So that would you order a salad in a restaurant right now, or would you have lettuce on your burger at a fast food chain.

00:10:38
Speaker 5: I don't like lettuce on my burger, but that ruins the burger to me. But but no, I mean, and let's let's just say Taco Bell Uh last week pulled produce from a number of their stores around the country because of this emerging issue. They they were pretty pro him about it and pulled that out. I think it's like on the sixth of July or so something like that. So obviously they had some issues that they knew about, so they said they were just throwing this stuff away. We're going to we're not going to use it. To answer your question, I guess it depends where I'm at. I mean, if I were in Michigan right now, I probably wouldn't order to sell it, or New York for that matter, because New York's number New York's number two on the list. In Ohio's number three, so.

00:11:29
Speaker 4: We're competitive, we're trying to catch up new York. We're number one. This is an important question. This is something I've talked to you about this for years, really, when it comes to food inspections. This is from Keisha Twins Too says, wondering whether reduced food inspections may have contributed to this outbreak. Is this something maybe that just happened, we got unlucky, or do you think the system now is contributed to so many of these outbreaks? And I think I might know your answer because I've heard it from you before.

00:11:58
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, the inspections haven't really fallen off because this is an FBA inspective product, it's not USBA. So you don't have inspectors in the plants, you don't have inspectors in the fields, and this is most likely contaminated in the field. So this is an issue, not that government dropped the ball on something, although there is an issue related to reporting that we can talk about a little bit. Because cyclospora used to be a reportable infection to CDC. It is no longer that way. They have dropped the mandatory reporting of food borne illnesses to include only two groups of microorganisms. One is salmonella and the other one is shugatoxin producing E. Coli or stex. All the other ones that were previously reported are no longer being reported to CDC. That's why the CDC case count is so low. CDC case count is like eight hundred and fifty or something like that, where we know we've got over twenty six hundred cases in Michigan alone.

00:13:12
Speaker 2: Why make the change, Why would they not include.

00:13:15
Speaker 5: Why would Well, I believe this was a move to try and put resources into areas that they felt were most important e. Coli and salmonella and take those resources away from other organisms like campellback or in Lasteria cyclospora, which I don't think was really a very good idea.

00:13:36
Speaker 3: I think today might be proving.

00:13:38
Speaker 5: That, yeah, I mean this is and this is this is hampering trace back efforts as well, because CDC is usually one of the best at being able to trace back. So now these all the local public health authorities in the different states are having to do their own trace back without the help of C. So it's it takes a long time. And there's twenty over twenty six hundred cases in Michigan, and I think I read this morning that they've interviewed about one thousand people, so they've got another you know, sixteen seventeen hundred people, and these are only people that have reported. You know, a lot of these cases go unreported. So I would tell you that I believe the case count is probably anywhere from two and a half to three times greater, and maybe even more than that, because if you get a stomach bug, most people don't bother report And so there's a number of people that have probably had about of explosive diarrhea who just said, oh, well, I guess I'll get over in a couple of days, and they don't report it.

00:14:48
Speaker 3: That makes a lot of sense.

00:14:49
Speaker 1: So the big question is Dad, if it's going to get worse before it gets better, and frankly, until they find the source and are able to at least stop this produce from being.

00:15:00
Speaker 3: Eaten or prepared.

00:15:03
Speaker 1: I'm curious when do you think that things will start to get better? Someone asked, how will we know when it's safe to eat things again?

00:15:14
Speaker 5: When the case counts, when the case count starts dropping.

00:15:17
Speaker 3: Do you have an idea when that could be?

00:15:19
Speaker 5: I have no idea because I don't I don't know what the source is, you know, I mean, you have to know the source so that you can take corrective action. Now, maybe maybe it was just a couple of bad weeks, you know, in a let us field, and that field is now harvested and the problem goes away all by itself. I mean, it's just really hard to know because we don't have a source and we don't know exactly what happened in the supply chain to cause the problem.

00:15:58
Speaker 2: Okay, here's my question on what you just asked.

00:15:59
Speaker 4: You said, this could be one field type of thing, and it might have been harvested, meaning we might have already consumed We're gonna just consume all that stuff in the market and it goes away. My question is is there any way for would it be would it be isolated to one field or one farm? Is there any way for it to jump, if you will, from this whole harvested batch of whatever it is, to something else another food source.

00:16:25
Speaker 5: Well, I mean number one, let us let let's just say it's lettuce. Okay, we don't know that, but let's just say it's lettuce. That lettuce comes in to a packing house and so that let us then it could be co mingled with other fields of lettuce, and so there could be spread that way, it gets it gets then sent to let's say a packaging house where they're processing this. Once it's in that facility, it could contaminate that facility. And if they're not and if they're not doing a great job with their triple washing, and it goes into bag salads or that let us could go into what a thousand different formulations. It could go into spring mix, it could go into you know, all sorts of different scenarios. It could go into a let us with a salad with carrots and onion. You know, it could go into food service. It could get spread, you know, through a distribution system, which looks like it may have happened with the Taco bell situation, that they got winded on something and so they just said we're done with it. So the trace back is going to be all important to find out where was the source. And it may not be a field, TJ. It could be a whole, you know, it could be a large farm, it could be a series of farms, and it could be associated with who was doing the harvesting. So there's just a lot of things we don't know.

00:17:56
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll let you take it here, Rode.

00:17:57
Speaker 4: But just because you brought it up, would you ever should we ever trust even before cycles when it says triple washed on that bag of let.

00:18:06
Speaker 5: Us, I do. I've been in a number of plants where they they do go through a very thorough hygienic chlorine based wash, and you know, and they've they've done a pretty good job. Now. I mean, one of the salad kit folks back I think it was five or six years ago, was associated with one of the first cyclist for outbreaks that people became aware of. I think it was like in twenty twenty, and this was a bag salad and I know the folks that were involved, and they changed their process pretty significantly to demonstrate that they were now being able to handle that kind of a contamination event. There's a professor down here at the University of Georgia, doctor or teig Uh, and she has made her life's work studying psychosphora. So she has been looking at ways to control it in the field, ways to control it through distribution, and ways to control it during processing. So there's a lot of research going on. But obviously when something like this happens, uh, you know, all the uh, all the best efforts, if there were any best efforts in this case, you know failed.

00:19:34
Speaker 1: I don't watch the Triple Wash because I knew my dad had always said that that was somewhat trustworthy. But now obviously they're saying not to trust it. Given the circumstances and dad, and by the way, doctor Otega is going to have all sorts of research for her to be working through with.

00:19:49
Speaker 3: This latest outbreak.

00:19:51
Speaker 1: But someone someone's question, and you've kind of really answered it, was why does it seem like officials still don't know what's causing this? Shouldn't they be able to trace contaminated food pretty quickly?

00:20:02
Speaker 3: You've explained why.

00:20:04
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not going to be a quick process. But can I ask you what is the process? Given the two weeks before the symptoms arise and people don't remember what they ate, how do they how are they going about trying to find the source?

00:20:20
Speaker 5: The public health authorities have a questionnaire and they will sit down with victims of the cyclospora outbreak and they will ask them a series of questions, and they will go back and they will get a food history, and they will ask where they may have purchased these products, and you know, and so they look for commonality in the answers that they get from the various people who've become ill, and that kind of helps them put clues together to kind of narrow it down as to what it might be. The difficulty here is that You've got lettuce which can be could be put into a lot of different products and sold a lot of different ways. So it gets a bit confusing. And people don't have the best memory. I mean, if they had an incubation time of ten days, fourteen days, you remember what you ate.

00:21:23
Speaker 3: And now I don't remember what I ate yesterdays ago.

00:21:27
Speaker 1: I don't eve remember what we had for dinner last night. So we're relying on people's memory.

00:21:34
Speaker 5: That becomes a problem. I mean that that it makes the epidemiology of it very difficult.

00:21:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Dad, I'm curious too.

00:21:49
Speaker 1: So is it possible that we could go through all of this thousands and thousands of people, uh disrupted with this awful I want to die, but I'm not going to die parasite. Is it possible at the end of this we never know what caused all of this mayhem.

00:22:08
Speaker 5: It's possible, but I don't think it's likely. I mean, I think some of the some of the words I'm hearing from Michigan officials, you know, is that I think they're beginning to narrow down, you know, what might be the cause. You know, I think the other things we're going to have to do, they're gonna have to get with tackle Bell and maybe with some of the other people who may be aware of this and get them involved so that they can use some of their data, some of their information to kind of narrow things down. But it looks like it's a leaky green of some sort, so they'll probably zero in on that and start asking more specific questions to the victims as to what it is they ate and when they ate it, and then where they purchased it, and hopefully maybe they can get back to was it a retail issue, Was it a distribution issue? Was it a service issue?

00:23:01
Speaker 4: Papa Robot, give folks the upside, the good news. It's something you always assured me. We've been talking about this for a while every time we're together. Actually it's so weird. I pull your dad to the side and start asking them food questions.

00:23:12
Speaker 2: But in this you've.

00:23:14
Speaker 4: Always said with these outbreaks, you said, yeah, it sounds terrible, but it's a sign that the system is working. Can we take some comfort or sure, folks who are listening that you know what, Yes, we might have these outbreaks, but it's telling us oftentimes that our system is in place and it's doing the job.

00:23:32
Speaker 2: It's supposed to do well.

00:23:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think I think that's exactly right to jeople. There's an awareness of what's happening. So, you know, the public health officials have done a pretty good job of jumping into this and trying to figure out what's going on. And I think they could have done a little better but job maybe putting out a learning to people, you know, maybe avoid these things. I know, they don't want to create a panic that they don't want to ruin an industry, you know, but when you've got twenty seven almost twenty seven hundred people in the state of Michigan that are experiencing this, you know, there might be a notification that could go out that consumers a little more information so that they can make an informed choice or take extra precautions, like even if you've got triple washed bad salad, wash it again, you know, or make sure that you're washing your raspberries or your snow bee's or your bes or your cilantro. So I think that public health officials need to be a little more proactive in giving people tools that they need. You know, we we we did this, you know when I was when I was working in the industry, working with government trying to get alerts out to people so that they can take appropriate precautions.

00:24:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, because people are just most.

00:24:54
Speaker 1: A lot of the questions we got were what can I eat at this point?

00:24:58
Speaker 3: And I'm curious.

00:24:59
Speaker 1: One of the questions, Dad, I like this from Zelena xxx. She said, how do you personally feel about it? Do you change any of your habits?

00:25:11
Speaker 5: Well, when something like this happens, you know, I would probably refrain from buying prepackaged salads and would probably go buy whole heads of lettuce or romaine or whatever, and then I would tear off the outer leaves and then I would wash what was left. The other thing that I do is I eat my own cilantro, and I eat my own basil. So, and I eat my own blackberries and.

00:25:37
Speaker 3: Red because you have a garden.

00:25:42
Speaker 5: Yeah so so so. And I eat my own snowpy. So I have a little advantage in that. But you know, hey, you know know your source. But then you can wash you You could put things in the calendar and wash it with fresh water and that will definitely lower the risk of getting setbuck.

00:26:04
Speaker 4: Is there is there a risk? I know we're talking about lettuce and salad greens. But with so much focus on that, can you remind us all the other things we should still be washing and mindful of because everybody's so focused on lettuce right now.

00:26:21
Speaker 5: Sure, any fresh produce, anything home should be washed. There's a yeah there there was a recall here in Georgia and the Southeast at public supermarkets with blueberries that were coming from Chile and they were contaminated with E. Coli jagatoxin producing ecoli. So blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, any any fruit, any fresh produce, make sure you wash it before you know, trim it and then wash it. Green onions is another one that is often implicated. Make sure you cut the wheat and off, and that you are taking out the outer layer of that scallion before you eat it, especially if it's raw. Now, if you cook it, if you cooked to one hundred and fifty eight degrees, so if you're saute your your onions and butter, that's going to kill the organism. But still you should take that out layer off. You should trim the roots off before you eat them.

00:27:25
Speaker 1: Dad, we eat green onions almost daily, and we eat them raw. We put them on top of eggs, We put them so and we don't do any of what you just said, So we will be changing some habits now upon imb speaking with you.

00:27:36
Speaker 5: Definitely, I definitely would change that habit.

00:27:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're frying everything from now on.

00:27:41
Speaker 1: We just.

00:27:47
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness.

00:27:47
Speaker 1: Yes. And DJ reminded everybody on our morning run was it this morning when we had a quick topic on this specifically?

00:27:54
Speaker 3: He said, and I always remember, never eat sprouts.

00:28:01
Speaker 2: Good job TJ Man to this day you put that in my head. I will run from a sprout in any room. I see. It's insane.

00:28:08
Speaker 1: He's like, are those sprouts on that I'm not eating that you call them the most dangerous food in the world.

00:28:14
Speaker 5: Please, yes, yes, I believe it is.

00:28:17
Speaker 1: Wait, yeah, for people who haven't heard this before, please explain why sprouts are the most dangerous food in the world.

00:28:23
Speaker 5: Well, the way sprout are grown. They will you know, they're just sprouted seeds and it can be any number of things. But they're very often immersed in let's say, less than clean water, especially organic sprouts where people like to use composted manure, they mix it with the water and that's what they sprout the seeds in. So you're basically if it's not properly composted. We go back to the old fecal oral route here, you know, and you're basically eating whatever fecal material may remain in that sprout.

00:29:00
Speaker 1: Mmm, okay, all right, you just hopefully everyone who's listening they'll never eat sprouts again.

00:29:05
Speaker 2: What's the I get it. I'll bet god you don't want to kill the sprout industry. Is there a sprout industry?

00:29:10
Speaker 1: But still the organic sprout industry is just taking a nose dive right now upon listening to.

00:29:15
Speaker 4: Also, while we're on that, remind people as well where they should not eat their oysters. This is another When we travel now, we carry a book called Papa Robots Food Tips, and this is another one about oysters.

00:29:29
Speaker 5: While we have you here, Well, eating raw oysters is a great pleasure. I enjoy them immensely, but I also understand that, you know, oysters are filterers, so they filter the water in which they live. And we know what happens in oceans. So my rule of thumb is always making sure that the oysters have been harvested from water that's under fifty degrees fahrenheit or ten degrees centigrade. So cold water oysters are the safest oyster I am. You know, I've said this many times. I don't eat Gulf Coast oysters raw. I'll eat them in oyster Rockefeller, but I won't eat it raw. And so I always make sure I know where they're coming from. And there's always been the public health authorities have done a pretty good job of putting out alerts if there's been a sewage spill or there's been a problem with an oyster belt in a certain part of the country, whether it's in British Columbia or Washington State, or up in Maine or in Newfoundland, if there's been a prop problem, they'll say, do not eat oysters from this region, even if it's below fifty degrees, because there's been a contamination problem that's been detected. So you have to be careful about that. But the main thing for me is under fifty degrees, good to go.

00:31:00
Speaker 4: Okay, Sorry I took an aside there, but that was that was a good public service announcements because that's the information sprouts and oysters.

00:31:07
Speaker 2: We always thank you.

00:31:08
Speaker 1: We should put that at the end of all all of our conversations with Dad, just to reiterate all of those important things. But Dad, thank you so much because we do rely on your expertise so much. You did spend your entire career, decades upon decades on these exact types of outbreaks, and we have so many questions because we aren't getting all of the information necessarily that we need as consumers from our government. So we appreciate you giving us all of those very important answers. Maybe they're not life saving at this point, but.

00:31:38
Speaker 3: Certainly well, quality of life is at stake. Let's just say.

00:31:42
Speaker 5: That they can be of lifestyle enhancing. Yeah, they can be life lifestyle enhancing.

00:31:49
Speaker 1: Avoiding explosive diarrhea by microboch.

00:31:53
Speaker 3: No, we appreciate you as lois.

00:31:56
Speaker 1: Dad, thank you so much for hopping on with us and answer bring all of these questions.

00:32:02
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it all right, Love you, Dad, Love you too. Bye bye MH.