On September 14, Representative Debbie Dingell and nine House colleagues wrote to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins asking why USDA shelved two of its three Cyclospora research projects during the largest foodborne illness outbreak the country has recorded. It is the fourteenth congressional letter on the 2026 outbreak, the first addressed to USDA, and the first since Senator Warren wrote on August 13. Six letters have now come from the House and eight from the Senate, every one of them from Democrats. I last wrote about the letters when the season closed. As of this morning I still cannot find a published answer to any of them.
Three days before the letter went out, CDC declared the outbreak over. Its final update ties 12,883 illnesses in twenty-one states, at least 570 hospitalizations and two deaths in Michigan to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico. The national season count is larger. CDC’s case data show 19,595 laboratory-confirmed domestic cases from May 1 through September 8, with 1,043 hospitalizations in forty-nine states and the District of Columbia, against 1,180 cases for the same months of 2025. FDA says its investigation continueswhile it moves into what it calls post-response, prevention-oriented work. Ending an outbreak is an epidemiological call. It does not answer anybody’s questions.
What the fourteenth letter asks
The letter rests on reporting by Politico, carried by Reuters, that two of three Agricultural Research Service Cyclospora projects at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland have been shelved and that the third is moving to Iowa. The members write that the scientists on that third project are not expected to relocate, that researchers can do little beyond preserving samples from past outbreaks, and that they are turning away requests for help from other federal agencies investigating this one. Senator Warren raised the Beltsville closure in August. This is the first letter built around it.
USDA told Reuters that Congress did not fund the two projects for fiscal 2026 and that the research service is working with research leaders on an orderly transition. The letter answers that the same November 2025 law barred USDA from spending money on its reorganization without congressional approval. Its first question asks whether the Department will seek that approval or proceed without it. The other five ask how many research service employees have left and what work their departures affected, how many relocating staff are expected to quit rather than move, how the vacancies will be filled, and how the Cyclospora samples and equipment will get from Maryland to Iowa intact. The members want answers within two weeks of receipt, which makes roughly September 28 the only live deadline on this outbreak.
Why it matters
For two months I have written that the letters asked about surveillance cuts, political influence and the recall, and that none asked how to keep the next outbreak from happening. This one comes closest. The members describe the research as what helps officials understand an outbreak and build a strategy to prevent the next one. There is no whole genome sequencing for this parasite. CDC links cases by genotyping, and used it in this outbreak to show the parasites making people sick were genetically related. The science that makes that possible does not maintain itself.
In July, Secretary Rollins told a Hill audience that cyclosporiasis is an FDA issue, not a USDA one. On outbreak response that is mostly right, since FDA regulates produce. On research it is not, and the fourteenth letter went to the department that holds the bench.
Here is the whole list, updated. The column on the right is still the one to read.
| Date | Who wrote, and to whom | What was asked for | Deadline and status |
| Jul 14 | Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN) to CDC and FDA | Restore FoodNet, FERN, inspection staffing and public health grants | None set. No answer found |
| Jul 15 | Rep. Greg Stanton (AZ) to Sec. Kennedy | Six questions: who ordered the surveillance change, what funding was cut, how many staff lost | Aug 3. Passed, no answer found |
| Jul 16 | Sen. Jon Ossoff (GA) to Sec. Kennedy | Three questions on restoring Cyclospora tracking and the state of the investigation | 72 hours, Jul 19. Passed, no answer found |
| Jul 17 | Reps. Dingell, McDonald Rivet, Scholten and Tlaib (MI) to CDC and FDA | Ten questions from inside the outbreak, including whether the agencies agree with Michigan on the source | Jul 24. Passed, no answer found |
| Jul 20 | Rep. Josh Gottheimer (NJ) to CDC | Restore FoodNet to mandatory active surveillance, plus two bills | None set. No answer found |
| Jul 20 | Sens. Blumenthal (CT) and Booker (NJ) to CDC | A briefing on how the outbreak was tracked and whether staffing cuts caused delay | Undated. No answer found |
| Jul 24 | Sen. Ossoff, second letter, to Sec. Kennedy | The same three questions, plus the fact that the first letter went unanswered | None set. No answer found |
| Jul 27 | Rep. Robert Garcia (CA), Oversight Ranking Member, to Bruce Taylor | Five categories of documents and five written questions, including facility records back to 2013 | Aug 10. Passed, no production found |
| Jul 28 | Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) to CDC and FDA | Six questions on the collapse of the federal laboratory network | Jul 31. Passed, no answer found |
| Jul 30 | Sen. Blumenthal, PSI Ranking Member, to FDA | All records, including every communication with the White House and with the company | Aug 13. Passed, no answer found |
| Jul 30 | Sen. Blumenthal, PSI Ranking Member, to Bruce Taylor | All records, including every communication with the White House and with FDA | Aug 13. Passed, no production found |
| Jul 30 | Reps. Veasey, Dingell and Sewell with about fifty colleagues, to CDC and FDA | Transparency and immediate action to identify the source | None set. No answer found |
| Aug 13 | Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) to Sec. Kennedy | Nine questions on the retracted test, the White House call, what the outbreak has cost, and which states still report | Aug 27. Passed, no answer found |
| Sep 14 | Rep. Dingell (MI) and nine House colleagues to Sec. Rollins, USDA | Six questions on the shelved Cyclospora research, staff losses at the research service, and whether USDA will seek congressional approval for its reorganization | Two weeks from receipt. Pending |
I believe that is every letter and I am not certain it is. I built the list from posted letters, press releases and, for the Blumenthal and Booker letter, a television report, and I have had to add letters after publishing before. No answer found means exactly that and nothing more; an agency can answer a member privately, and neither side has to publish it. If you have an answer to any of these, send it and I will correct this post.
The fix sits in the same law as the traceability delay
USDA’s answer puts the two shelved projects in an appropriations decision. The November 2025 law that ended the shutdown also carries Section 780, which bars FDA from spending money to administer or enforce the food traceability rule before July 20, 2028. One law holds both the research cut USDA now points to and the delay that made this outbreak harder to trace. Congress wrote both provisions, and Congress can undo both in the next funding bill. Neither fix needs a letter.
Still no hearing
Eight dated deadlines have passed without a published answer, the last on August 27. No committee has noticed a hearing. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which held a hearing on Cyclospora in imported raspberries in July 1998, can issue a subpoena; Senator Blumenthal wrote as its ranking member and copied Chairman Ron Johnson, and a ranking member cannot subpoena alone. The House Oversight majority can adopt Representative Garcia’s document request as the committee’s own. The Agriculture Committees in both chambers oversee USDA, and the appropriators fund all three agencies. Every one of those tools belongs to the majority.
CDC says the outbreak is over. The questions are not. Fourteen letters have put them in writing, thirteen of them have gone unanswered in public, and the newest is due in about two weeks. If a letter will not put anyone in a chair, a subpoena to a hearing will.