New series · All three parts out now
Twenty-two thousand people.
Two dead.
Nobody counting.
A parasite moved through the American lettuce supply this summer and became the largest cyclosporiasis outbreak in the country’s history. We spent three hours working out how — and why the systems built to catch it could not see it happening.
On Tuesday night the CDC published its own count for the first time and it was four thousand cases higher than the figure everyone had been using, including us. That is the story in one sentence.
The Cyclospora Files
Three episodes. One parasite.
Listen in order if you can. Part One is the outbreak, Part Two is the company and the documents, Part Three is who ends up carrying it.
Under Control
On 21 July the Secretary of Health and Human Services said the outbreak was under control. This is what the two weeks after that sentence actually looked like — and the surveillance programme that last summer stopped requiring anybody to track this parasite.
The Box Stays in the Back
You have probably been buying this company for thirty years without ever seeing its name. Five rewrites of one public statement in sixteen days, a plant in Guanajuato where this happened to six hundred and thirty-one people in 2013 — and the week the country’s largest food distributor stopped buying from them.
Someone Else’s Problem
A theory of government. A labour arrangement in Arizona. Thirty-two million missing dollars. Everybody the outbreak knocked over on its way past — and Taylor Farms’ own answer to the ten questions we put to them, read in full.
Why we spent three hours on salad
“We like to say in public health that, when we do our jobs right, nothing happens — and we’re seeing now the opposite of that, where things are happening.”
Dr Caitlin Rivers, Johns Hopkins Center for Health SecurityThat is the most brutal job description ever written, and it explains nearly every decision in this story. A programme whose success looks identical to its own absence is the easiest line item in any budget to cut. Nobody gets a ribbon for the twenty-two thousand people who didn’t get sick.
We are a small show. We do not have a laboratory or a subpoena. What we did have was six weeks of other people’s reporting, a stack of federal documents going back to 2013, and enough time to read all of it and lay it side by side.
Listener resources
Everything we used, and everything you might need
Symptoms and when to get help
Dehydration is what makes this dangerous. Symptoms, the warning signs that matter, and how to report an illness to your state.
Is it in my fridge?
The supermarket brands this supplier makes, why you cannot identify them from the bag, and the one thing that actually kills the parasite.
What happened, in order
The full timeline, why every outlet gave you a different number, and the twelve foodborne outbreaks the FDA is running at once.
Sources & how we reported it
Every article we used, the 2013 primary documents, Taylor Farms’ full statement to us, and our corrections policy.
About the show
A barn on a hill, and a very long attention span.
Little Hill Podcast makes long-form documentary audio about how things actually work — usually by reading the paperwork nobody else has time for. Hosted by Helbard Alkhassadeh.
We take our time. We attribute everything. We publish our sources, we correct our mistakes in public, and when a story involves a company we write to them first and read their answer in full, whether it helps us or not.
There is a barn in our logo, which felt like a coincidence until our biggest story turned out to be about where American food comes from.
Talk to us
If you got sick this summer, we would like to hear from you.
Twenty-two thousand people were infected, five hundred and seventeen went to hospital, and almost none of them have been interviewed by anybody. That is the biggest gap in our reporting and we would like to close it — especially if you were ill and nobody ever told you what with.
You decide what is on the record. We will not use your name without asking, and you can change your mind at any point before we publish.
Goes to a person, not a form. Replace with your real address and add a voicemail line before publishing.
Little Hill Podcast · Last updated 5 August 2026
Our reporting is journalism, not medical advice. Outbreak figures move daily and ours will lag — for live numbers see the CDC, the FDA outbreak page, and your state health department.
Found an error? Tell us — we publish corrections.
All photographs on this site are stock images. None of them show the farms, fields, packing houses, products, patients or people in this story, and none should be read as depicting them.