California farm company identified as possible cyclosporiasis outbreak source: Reports

[Ms. Toad]

33. It is only less common (not rare)

Because people tend not to need to defecate as frequently as the need to urinate. But explosive diarrhea does change that calculation. I occasionally have medication induced diarrhea that sounds a lot like this diarrhea - and the need has hit as frequently as every 15-30 minutes for hours.

If the source is human fecal matter from defecating in the field, it would only have gotten this significant because of the post-field production process, which washes, chops, and bags intermingled lettuce from hundreds of thousands of heads, spreading the "gift" among way more consumers that contaminating a single plant would.

I'm not saying this outbreak was caused by direct human contamination - just that believing farmworkers don't defecate in the fields isn't based on ignorance about farms.