As Michigan’s cyclospora outbreak has grown over the past few weeks, I have seen two very different reactions circulating. Some people have concluded that raw produce is too risky altogether, leaving them unsure whether even food from their own gardens is safe. Others have used the outbreak to extol the virtues of local food, claiming that cyclospora would never be found somewhere like the farmers market — as though contamination could never happen on a small farm.

As someone who researches and sells local food, and who hopes to make as many no-cook recipes as possible during this hot July, I was having trouble finding a concrete answer to the question underneath both reactions: Is farmers-market produce actually safer right now, or should we treat all raw produce as equally suspect?

Based on the best information currently available, produce harvested from your own garden or a U-pick farm, or bought directly from the grower at a producer-only farmers market, genuinely is the safer option right now.

Not every farmers market works the same way. Some require vendors to sell only what they grew, while others allow resale, so the important question is whether you are actually buying directly from the farm that produced the food.

Michigan has reported more than 3,700 cases of cyclosporiasis, an intestinal illness caused by the parasite cyclospora. After more than 1,000 interviews, state health officials say lettuce and salad greens are appearing repeatedly as a possible source. They have not identified a specific product, grower, or supplier, and they have not ruled out other foods.

Cyclospora can contaminate produce on a farm of any size if human waste reaches the crop or the water used around it. The problem might begin in irrigation water, through a septic failure, or while produce is being washed or packed. FDA guidance on cyclospora and fresh produce describes these kinds of contamination risks.

What differs is the route produce takes afterward. At a producer-only farmers market, the chain may be as short as the farm growing and harvesting the food, bringing it to market, and selling it directly to the customer. Produce from a home garden or harvested at a U-pick farm has an even shorter route.

Grocery-store produce may pass through many more stages. The FDA’s own example of a fresh-produce supply chain moves from the farm through harvesting, cooling, packing, processing, distribution and retail. Bagged salads and pre-cut vegetables may also be washed, cut, and mixed with produce from several farms.

Not every grocery-store vegetable passes through every one of these stages, and many processing practices are designed to improve food safety. But each additional stage is another place where contamination could occur and another link investigators must reconstruct. When produce from several farms is mixed and sent out widely, one contaminated lot can reach far more people while becoming harder to trace.

Produce bought directly from the grower still carries the ordinary risks of that farm, but it avoids most of the later stages, including the possibility that it has been mixed with food from unknown sources. Short supply chains always help limit how widely contamination can spread and make its source easier to identify. During this unresolved outbreak, they also make direct-market produce far less likely to be connected to the still-unidentified source.

Michigan currently recommends whole heads of lettuce rather than prewashed bags or salad kits. Local lettuce can be scarce in July, especially during sustained heat, so a salad made from local produce might instead begin with Napa cabbage, kale, broccoli, cucumbers, herbs or whatever else farms and gardens have available.

Those foods can still be contaminated; being local does not make the vegetables themselves safer. What makes a difference here is that produce bought directly from the farm is much less likely to be connected to the long supply chain investigators are trying to trace.

So, thankfully, go ahead and make the no-cook recipes during the heat wave. Wash and handle produce according to standard produce-safety guidance, but when it comes from your garden, a U-pick farm, or directly from the grower at a producer-only market, this outbreak does not give you new reasons to worry about eating it raw.

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