Earlier this summer, when the news broke about an outbreak of cyclosporiasis — a parasitic infection that results in abdominal distress and is passed on via food or water that has been contaminated by human fecal matter — spreading across the country, one question came up again and again: How did human poop end up in our food system?
On the internet, speculation abounded. Could farmworkers be sick themselves? Were they relieving themselves in the field because their working conditions didn’t ensure proper access to bathrooms? Or did this have something to do with farmworkers, often migrant men and women, being deported? Perhaps, all along, they were the ones protecting consumers from foodborne illnesses. Posts about the outbreak, centering farm labor as either the potential source of disease or as stewards of the food supply, began to crop up.
But these theories are all either incomplete or misguided, say food safety experts. The scale of this summer’s outbreak — the biggest known in U... Read more
