00:00Food recalls really did spike this summer, and so did the number of people getting sick.
00:04A lot of people are treating that like it's the same story, but it's really not.
00:09Here's what's happening.
00:09The version going around is that food safety is collapsing, and federal cuts are why.
00:15But most of that does not hold up.
00:16The CDC confirmed 18,445 cases of cyclospora since May 1st.
00:22Last summer, it was 1,180.
00:25And ever since, there have been non-stop articles about food recalls.
00:29And recalls did go up, 26 this August, up from 18 a year ago, according to the New Republic.
00:34But a recall isn't an outbreak.
00:36It just means something shipped with a defect, and that's anything from glass in your popsicles to a wrong date
00:42on a label.
00:42You've probably seen the CDC's cuts blamed for the outbreak, too.
00:46NBC News reported the CDC narrowed its foodborne tracking program last year.
00:51But some Democrats blamed those cuts for the outbreak,
00:54and factcheck.org found the state's hit hardest weren't even in the program that changed.
00:59The program everyone's pointing at tracks long-term trends.
01:02It was never built to catch outbreaks.
01:04Still, the same fact check says other staffing and funding cuts likely did slow the government's response.
01:10So the recalls and the outbreak are two very different stories.
01:13What's left is the parasite, and it's real.
01:16The lettuce outbreak has hospitalized 495 people and killed two.
01:20Fortune found that two out of three people now avoid an entire food category when shopping after all these recalls.
01:26So did the headlines change what went in your cart this summer, or did you keep buying the lettuce?
01:30Let us know in the comments and follow us here for more.
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