Urgent: Restore FDA and Public Health Funding—Budget Cuts Have Crippled Outbreak Response

I am writing as your constituent to urge immediate action to restore federal public health capacity to 2024 levels and to address the alarming regulatory breakdown exposed by the ongoing multistate cyclosporiasis outbreak affecting at least 41 states with multiple clusters still emerging. The 2025 budget cuts to the FDA, CDC, NIH, and state and local public health programs have eliminated critical personnel and infrastructure necessary for timely outbreak response. At the FDA specifically, these cuts have resulted in the loss of experienced epidemiologists, laboratory scientists, and regulatory specialists whose expertise was essential to conducting rapid traceback investigations and maintaining consistent, science-based guidance during food safety crises. The agency now lacks the staffing to detect difficult pathogens like cyclospora in produce, and its data systems cannot synthesize case reports fast enough to identify patterns. The result is investigative delays that allow contamination to spread while officials struggle to issue clear, coordinated guidance. This personnel collapse has directly contributed to the confused federal response we are witnessing. The FDA posted warnings about contaminated lettuce without identifying the producer, then reversed course on false-positive test results, deleted public statements, and issued unclear clarifications. Taylor Farms initially claimed no association with the outbreak, then issued a voluntary recall using only internal product codes rather than brand names, leaving consumers unable to identify contaminated products. These contradictions reflect an agency stripped of the experienced staff who would normally catch such inconsistencies before public release. Financial records reveal that Taylor Farms donated one million dollars to a Trump-affiliated Super PAC, raising legitimate concerns about whether political influence is driving the federal response. Company executives met with White House and FDA officials to distance themselves from the outbreak, meetings that appear to have coincided with the confusing and incomplete recall announcement. Federal officials must demonstrate that food safety decisions are driven by epidemiology, not donations. I urge you to support the following actions: 1) Restore public health funding to 2024 levels, with dedicated resources for FDA laboratory capacity and epidemiological personnel. 2) The Food Traceability Rule, designed to address these exact gaps, must be accelerated to January 2027 from its current 2028 target, after it was unaccountably delayed from January of 2026, as the 2011 legislation originally required. 3) Restore affordable health insurance access to eliminate coverage gaps that prevent timely clinical testing and case reporting, which mask outbreak severity and delay decisive public health action. 4) Hold hearings to investigate the malign influence-peddling that is apparently affecting the FDA and HHS in such diverse areas as food safety, vaccination rates, and peptide promotion. It seems clear that conflict-of-interest problems related to political donations in return for regulatory favors are cropping up with some regularity. Public health infrastructure protects every American household. The cyclosporiasis outbreak has exposed what happens when leadership fails, regulatory capacity collapses, and political influence overrides science. Restored funding, regulatory clarity, conflict-of-interest safeguards, and accessible healthcare are not luxuries—they are the minimum requirements for a functional response to the next inevitable outbreak.