A government program that monitors food poisoning on the national level has scaled back its operations, NBC News reported on Tuesday.
The Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet), a collaboration between federal health agencies and 10 state health departments, was previously required to track foodborne illnesses caused by eight pathogens.
As of July 1, it only has to monitor two: Salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), according to NBC News.
A spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed this information to Health, and said other systems at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will continue national surveillance for the remaining six pathogens.
Still, food safety experts are concerned that the change will compromise public health and increase the risk of food poisoning.
“It would be like the FAA saying that we are just going to focus on airplane crashes from American and Delta, and we’re not [worrying] about any crashes that happen from Southwest, United, Alaska, Spirit, JetBlue, and Frontier,” Donald W. Schaffner, PhD, department chair, professor, and extension specialist in Food Science at Rutgers University, told Health.
FoodNet was created in 1995 to monitor and respond to foodborne illness in the U.S.
The network consists of the CDC, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the health departments of 10 states: Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, California, and New York.
FoodNet’s surveillance covers 16% of the U.S. population, or about 54 million people. But Teresa Bergholz, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Michigan State University, told Health that the data from this pool is used to estimate the incidence of foodborne disease for the entire U.S. population.
FoodNet actively surveills for infections and tracks trends over time to see if our food supply is getting safer, riskier, or staying the same, Schaffner explained, which helps inform federal regulations and food industry practices.
The network also plays a key role in the public health response during an outbreak. When an outbreak occurs, state health labs typically detect pathogens from patient samples and report the data to the CDC, explained Bergholz. FoodNet can then use this information to identify the contaminated food and inform the public of the threat.
Before July, FoodNet was required to track foodborne illnesses caused by six additional pathogens: Listeria, Campylobacter, Shigella, Cyclospora, Vibrio, and Yersinia.
According to the HHS spokesperson, the reason for the rollback is to “allow FoodNet staff to prioritize core activities.”
NBC News also cited another reason for the change, taken from a list of CDC talking points shared with the Connecticut Public Health Department and obtained by NBC: “Funding has not kept pace with the resources required to maintain the continuation of FoodNet surveillance for all eight pathogens.”
As for the decision to keep monitoring Salmonella and STEC, the HHS spokesperson said the two pathogens are among the top five contributors to foodborne illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths in America. They’re also targets of Healthy People 2030, an HHS initiative aimed at improving public health, including reducing foodborne illness.
It’s worth noting, however, that Listeria and Campylobacter are also included on those lists.
The HHS spokesperson said there is still some national surveillance of the six pathogens, such as through the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System, but FoodNet is the only system that actively monitors foodborne illness at the national level, NBC News reported.
The states in FoodNet can choose to keep monitoring the pathogens, but according to NBC, the response has been varied, and will likely depend on funding.
For instance, the Maryland Health Department will continue monitoring all eight pathogens since it’s required at the state level. But the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment told NBC it will need to scale back its active surveillance for some pathogens if funding is decreased in 2026.
The experts Health spoke to said this level of downsizing puts the safety of our food at risk.
Schaffner pointed to CDC data revealing that the six pathogens still pose a risk to consumers, especially more vulnerable populations—infants, pregnant people, the elderly, and the immunocompromised—who are more likely to experience a life-threatening infection from a foodborne illness.
“We know, and have known, that these are things that are associated with food poisoning,” added Lewis Ziska, PhD, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, who worked at the USDA for more than 20 years. “Why in the world would you suddenly decide that you want to stop monitoring it?”
Schaffner was especially concerned about the decision to stop requiring surveillance for Campylobacter and Listeria illnesses.
“CDC’s own data estimates that we have more illnesses and hospitalizations from Campylobacter than we do from Salmonella,” he said. “It would seem to me to be a terrible idea to discontinue important work on the bacterial species that causes more illnesses and hospitalizations than any other.”
As for Listeria, the pathogen may not cause many infections, but cases can be severe—it’s one of the leading causes of death from foodborne illness.
The change could also “impact how quickly some outbreaks are detected, as FoodNet focuses on active surveillance for the target pathogens,” Bergholz said. “Faster detection of outbreaks also means more information available to the public on the source of the outbreak and what product should be avoided.”
While government oversight is the most effective way to keep pathogens out of food, Ziska told Health that it may be useful to pay extra attention to basic food safety practices at this time. These include:
- Separating meat and produce in cooking
- Rinsing produce thoroughly
- Cooking meat to a safe internal temperature
- Cleaning cooking surfaces and utensils often
- Storing and refrigerating food properly
According to the CDC, the most common symptoms of food poisoning are:
If you experience food poisoning, drink plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration, and consider talking to a doctor if your symptoms don’t go away within a week.
“[Food poisoning] doesn’t necessarily result in your death—though, it can,” Ziska said. “But it’s very painful and something to be avoided at all costs.”
