NBC Segment Asks Whether Budget Cuts Are Driving Recent Foodborne Illness Outbreaks

A segment on NBC's TODAY is asking whether federal budget cuts are behind a recent run of foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States.

The roughly two-and-a-half-minute report, titled "Are Budget Cuts Behind Recent Outbreaks in Foodborne Illnesses?", appears alongside a separate TODAY report on a salmonella outbreak linked to jalapeños that has spread to 27 states.

The network did not, in the material accompanying the video, identify which agencies or programs it examined, name the officials interviewed, or specify the number of people sickened in the outbreaks it references. NBC also did not publish a written summary setting out the conclusions of the report.

Questions about the capacity of federal food safety oversight have followed each large multistate outbreak in recent years, because tracing contaminated produce back to a single grower or packing facility depends on laboratory work and case interviews carried out by state and federal health agencies working together.

The jalapeño-linked salmonella outbreak referenced in the accompanying TODAY report is one of the larger recent multistate events, reaching 27 states. No case count, source farm or recall list was included in the material published with the video.

NBC published the segment as part of its daily TODAY video lineup, which also included reports on wildfires in Spokane, Washington, and drought-driven water rationing in Puerto Rico.