Food Poisoning Law Blog : Food Poisoning Lawyer & Attorney : PritzkerLaw : Food Safety, Outbreaks & Recalls

When the USDA announced that it wanted to protect American consumers by banning six more serotypes of E. coli, food safety advocates cheered. After all who wouldn’t be happy with an effort to keep dangerous pathogens out of the food supply?

A handful of groups, including the American Meat Institute and the governments of Australia and New Zealand, as it turns out.

In September, the USDA announced that the E. coli serogroups O26, O103, O45, O111, O121 and O145 would be prohibited from entering commerce beginning March 5, 2012. The Big Six, as they are sometimes called, have been identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the serotypes responsible for the greatest numbers of non-O157 shiga-toxin producing E. coli (STEC) illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths in the United States.

"Consumers deserve a modernized food safety system that focuses on prevention and protects them and their families from emerging threats. As non-O157 STEC bacteria have emerged and evolved, so too must our regulatory policies to protect the public health and ensure the safety of our food supply," Agriculture Under Secretary Elisabeth Hagen stated.

The USDA invited public comment, and, on Thursday, got one from the American Meat Institute’s Executive Vice President James H. Hodges who says current testing is good enough.

“USDA is proposing a solution in search of a problem,” Hodges said in a statement.

The Food Safety Inspection Service’s Draft Risk Profile includes comments from scientific experts that highlight knowledge gaps about the BIg Six such as “We found no consensus in the scientific community about precisely which features, or virulence factors, make an STEC harmful to humans.” The new policy also lacks a cost estimate for implementation, Hodges stated. “Given the many questions surrounding both its potential effectiveness and its costs, implementation should be delayed until a more thorough analysis is conducted and more is known.”
 

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When the USDA announced that it wanted to protect American consumers by banning six more serotypes of E. coli, food safety advocates cheered. After all who wouldn’t be happy with an effort to keep dangerous pathogens out of the food supply?

A handful of groups, including the American Meat Institute and the governments of Australia and New Zealand, as it turns out.

In September, the USDA announced that the E. coli serogroups O26, O103, O45, O111, O121 and O145 would be prohibited from entering commerce beginning March 5, 2012. The Big Six, as they are sometimes called, have been identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the serotypes responsible for the greatest numbers of non-O157 shiga-toxin producing E. coli (STEC) illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths in the United States.

"Consumers deserve a modernized food safety system that focuses on prevention and protects them and their families from emerging threats. As non-O157 STEC bacteria have emerged and evolved, so too must our regulatory policies to protect the public health and ensure the safety of our food supply," Agriculture Under Secretary Elisabeth Hagen stated.

The USDA invited public comment, and, on Thursday, got one from the American Meat Institute’s Executive Vice President James H. Hodges who says current testing is good enough.

“USDA is proposing a solution in search of a problem,” Hodges said in a statement.

The Food Safety Inspection Service’s Draft Risk Profile includes comments from scientific experts that highlight knowledge gaps about the BIg Six such as “We found no consensus in the scientific community about precisely which features, or virulence factors, make an STEC harmful to humans.” The new policy also lacks a cost estimate for implementation, Hodges stated. “Given the many questions surrounding both its potential effectiveness and its costs, implementation should be delayed until a more thorough analysis is conducted and more is known.”

What is already known is that each of the Big Six have caused severe, sometimes life-threatening illness in people all over the country such as the May 2010 E. coli O145 outbreak linked to Freshway Foods Romaine lettuce, that sickened people in Michigan, Ohio, New York and Tennessee, three of whom contracted hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), which can cause kidney failure and death. What more needs to be known?

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The Oklahoma State Department of Public Health issued a report this week that provides an excellent example of the impact that food poisoning has on our society -- beyond the ultimate price of human health and life.

For starters, the most important thing to remember about the E. coli O111 outbreak at Country Cottage Restaurant in northeastern Oklahoma last year was that contaminated food or water killed one of the patrons and sickened more than 300 others. National food safety law firm PritzkerOlsen, P.A., represents some of the victims, including a toddler who became seriously ill with hemolytic uremic syndrome and had to undergo dialysis.

According to the executive summary of the report, the state alone poured 6,481 hours of work into the public health response and investigation into what was to become the largest E. coli O111 outbreak in U.S. history. Once victims started to show up at Tulsa area hospitals with bloody diarrhea, it took less than 48 hours for health investigators to identify Country Cottage as the likely source of the outbreak. Shutting the restaurant down contained the outbreak, but investigators were never able to pinpoint the exact cause of transmission inside the restaurant. 

If you were to conservatively attach $65 an hour to the equation, the cost to Oklahoma taxpayers exceeded $420,000 -- probably much closer to half a million dollars. And that doesn't count the many hours of work on the outbreak performed by health departments in nearby states, the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

There's no surprises in the report, but here's what the official findings of the state's epidemiologic investigation indicate:

1. This was a point source outbreak originating from the Country Cottage restaurant in Locust Grove, Oklahoma.
2. Because the outbreak organism was not isolated from any environmental specimen, it could not be conclusively determined how E. coli O111 was introduced into the restaurant.
3. The exact mode of spread within the restaurant was not established, however, the epidemiological analyses suggests there was ongoing foodborne transmission of E. coli O111 to Country Cottage restaurant patrons between August 15 and August 24, 2008.

The report also had a nice, technical summary of how E. coli reaches and damages its victims:

Enterohemorrhagic E. coli can cause serious illness and pathology because of its ability to produce potent cytotoxins called Shiga toxins 1 and 2. Persons who ingest Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) may have a diarrheal illness ranging from very mild and non-bloody to severe with very bloody stools. Cattle and other ruminant animals such as sheep, goats, and deer are considered the primary reservoir of STEC bacteria. The infectious dose is very small and STEC are often spread by ingesting food items contaminated with ruminant feces that are not subsequently cooked. Person-to-person transmission, direct animal contact, and waterborne transmission, either from contaminated drinking water or recreational water, are other exposure routes.

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A 20-month-old little girl is recovering from hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), an illness she developed after contracting an E. coli O111 infection. She stayed in the hospital for 12 days and needed dialysis treatment to get her kidneys working again. Her father stated in a USA Today report that “she received dialysis treatment and was stuck with so many needles she thought she was being punished.”

This little girl was part of an E. coli O111 outbreak that health officials associated with the Country Cottage restaurant in Locust Grove, Oklahoma. According to the CDC, 313 people were sickened in the outbreak. One person died and 17 developed HUS and needed dialysis. To date, health officials have not found a food source for the outbreak.

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