Research shows that consumer concerns reduced purchases even in states without reported Cyclospora outbreaks
Hindsight is 20/20, they say, and now we see a food safety outbreak doesn’t have to occur in a retailer’s own market to hurt its sales. New research makes it clear that the damage can extend beyond recalled products or empty shelves.
Cyclospora outbreaks – and there have been several – cost U.S. bagged-salad retailers an estimated $374 million in lost sales between 2018 and 2022, according to a study published in Risk Analysis. Researchers at The Ohio State University and the University of Florida found that weekly bagged salad purchases declined an average of 3.89% during outbreak and recall cycles. Unsurprisingly, the steepest declines are associated with heightened public attention.
In a troubling finding, it seems the losses weren’t confined to states where illnesses occurred. Purchases also declined in states without reported outbreaks when those states shared media markets with affected areas.
In other words, a food safety problem in one state is usually a sales problem in another.
The Damage Spreads Beyond Outbreak Areas
The researchers examined six major multistate Cyclospora outbreaks between 2018 and 2022, four of which were linked to salad products. Together, those outbreaks accounted for 2,157 illnesses, approximately 65% of the 3,344 outbreak-associated cases reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s National Outbreak Reporting System during that period.
Using household purchasing data and Google search activity across 210 media markets, the researchers measured how consumers responded to outbreak announcements and recalls.
One finding stands out: Retailers did not meaningfully restrict supply during the affected periods. Products were generally available but consumers were buying less of them. In this way we can see that retailers can manage inventory, replace recalled merchandise and work with suppliers to maintain availability – all to a fare-thee-well. But restoring consumer confidence is another matter entirely.
The study also found that purchasing declines were closely associated with what consumers were searching for online. Markets with higher Google search volumes for “Cyclospora” experienced the steepest declines, but searches for general salad-related terms were associated with much smaller changes.
To be clear, the research doesn’t establish that Google searches caused consumers to stop buying bagged salads. But it seems to demonstrate a relationship between public attention and purchasing behavior that retailers would be wise to monitor.
Two Outbreak Years Accounted for Most Losses
The financial consequences were heavy, if not exactly dire. Researchers estimated that the 2018 outbreaks generated approximately $79 million in lost bagged salad sales, while the 2020 outbreak accounted for nearly $190 million. Together, those two specific periods represented approximately 72% of that $374 million retail loss figure.
The 2020 salad outbreak was the largest individual event examined, involving 771 illnesses. Interestingly, Google search activity on Cyclospora was higher during the 2018 outbreaks.
The researchers suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic, which, as we all know, absolutely dominated news coverage in 2020, may have “taken the heat off” Cyclospora, reducing public attention and potentially moderating consumer response despite the outbreak’s substantial size.
“What people read online shows up in what they put in their carts,” said Xuerui Yang, a study author and former doctoral student at Ohio State who is now a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “Balanced risk communication and consistent monitoring of search activity during high-stakes outbreaks can help anticipate where demand losses will concentrate.”
A Bigger Problem Than Recalled Merchandise
There are the immediate costs of a recall, but there are also far-reaching knock-on effects for produce and grocery retailers.
A retailer can have perfectly safe products on its shelves, operate hundreds of miles from an outbreak and still experience declining category sales because consumers associate the broader product category with a food safety problem. That’s obviously a tricky spot; consumers may not distinguish between a specific recalled product and similar merchandise from other suppliers.
Cyclospora cayetanensis, the parasite responsible for the illness cyclosporiasis, can survive conventional chlorine washing processes and persist in soil or water for months, complicating prevention efforts throughout the produce supply chain.
The research also arrives amid heightened attention to Cyclospora prevention, coming hot on the heels of the massive 2026 outbreak.
This is one of the clearest demonstrations I can think of for the importance of accurate, timely food-safety communication. It’s not exactly an intuitive move, but monitoring search activity and local purchasing trends could also help identify where consumer concerns are translating into lost sales. After all, food safety incidents don’t respect state lines, media-market boundaries or the difference between implicated and unaffected products.