07/28/2026
Thanks for the original share Gina Kerr. We have to talk about this, folks. Shop local and take care of your own health — absolutley. But outbreaks like cyclosporiasis and E. coli are why food is political. We can’t buy local and just look the other way when industrial systems and inadequate policies create sick working conditions for the vast majority of our food.
Between 2017 and 2019, five separate E. coli outbreaks linked to romaine lettuce sickened over 500 Americans across 36 states, killed five, and put dozens into kidney failure severe enough to require dialysis. The CDC told the entire country to throw away all romaine regardless of origin. The cause was not a mystery. It was a toilet.
Farmworkers picking lettuce by hand across vast commercial fields in triple-digit Arizona and California heat had inadequate or no access to portable toilets. Piece-rate pay structures meant stopping to relieve yourself cost money workers could not afford to lose. Human waste entered the soil. It entered the irrigation water. It entered the food supply. The FDA's own environmental assessments acknowledged inadequate field sanitation as a contributing risk factor. California labor inspectors had cited large lettuce operations for insufficient portable toilet access in the exact years the outbreaks occurred. Regulators knew. The industry knew.
The pattern predates the romaine crisis by decades. The 2006 spinach outbreak killed three people and sickened 200 across 26 states under identical conditions in Monterey County, California. The 1996 Cyclospora outbreak in Guatemalan strawberries and raspberries was linked directly to fields with no bathroom facilities whatsoever. Every outbreak triggered the same industry response: more water testing, better labeling, voluntary pledges. Never toilets. Never breaks. Never accountability for the decision to treat human biological necessity as a productivity problem to be managed around rather than a right to be protected.
Sources: FDA, CDC, California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, Food and Environment Reporting Network, Consumer Reports, 1996-2026
