Who’s most at risk in the cyclospora outbreak? The farmworkers on the front lines.

As the largest known U.S. cyclosporiasis outbreak spread this summer, online speculation blamed farmworkers, either as the disease source or as unwitting victims of poor bathroom access, even as one company, Taylor Farms, has been linked to cases in multiple states and the FDA opened an inspection at its facility in central Mexico. Food safety experts say the scale of the outbreak points instead to contaminated irrigation or reused water, a practice legal in nearly half of U.S. states.

Amy Liebman of the Migrant Clinicians Network says farmworkers are more likely to be exposed to the disease than to cause it, given crowded living and working conditions, while intensified immigration enforcement pushes the population further from care. She also notes a weakened public health system left frontline health departments investigating the outbreak with limited support from the CDC.

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