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

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) annual cheerleading and dance/drill competition in Everett, Washington, drew some 3,000 observers and 1,000 participants to Comcast Arena on February 4. The next day and day after, some people who attended began to experience symptoms of food illness.

Now the Washington State Department of Health and the Snohomish Health District are investigating what organsim made people sick, where it came from and how many fell ill. The early-stage food poisoning investigation was announced yesterday in a press release that said a food history questionnaire will be sent to participants.

The WIAA said Comcast Arena officials are cooperating with the investigation. People who got sick experienced nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, fever and diarrhea. People who attended the event from around the state are advised to contact a health care provider if they have symptoms.

“Our immediate concerns are for those who have been affected by this illness and our thoughts are with them,” said WIAA Executive Director Mike Colbrese.

Food safety law firm PritzkerOlsen, P.A., is monitoring this investigation and providing free case consultations to families and individuals for possible representation. State officials have not said if anyone was hospitalized. To discuss your concerns with an experienced food illness lawyer at our firm, leave your contact information or call 1-888-377-8900 (Toll Free)

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

 "Walking tacos'' sold at the Pierre-Mitchell high school basketball game in Pierre, South Dakota, last week was the likely cause of a food illness outbreak that appears to have sickened more than 50 people.

State Epidemiologist Lon Kightlinger said testing revealed the outbreak organism to be clostridium perfringens,, or C. perfringens, a bacteria found on raw meat that can spread if cooking doesn't kill it and the meat is left to simmer at temperatures that are too low. The game took place at Riggs High School.

Walking tacos is a portable dish created by adding ground beef, cheese and salsa to a small bag of corn chips. Seventy-five percent of the respondents who ate the tacos reported becoming ill, Kightlinger said.

The DOH had 217 voluntary telephone and website responses from both well and ill people who attended the game in Pierre. The case remains open, but Kightlinger believes the problem was limited to the basketball game.

Symptoms of clostridium perfringens include diarrhea and cramps lasting less than 24 hours, or longer in some cases. The onset of illness is usually quick and in this case, three quarters of those who became ill reported getting sick between midnight and 6 a.m. the following morning.

The South Dakota Department of Health has posted on its webste a food safety lesson from the USDA titled "Cooking for Groups. A volunteer's guide to food safety.'' 

Source: The Daily Republic

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

 An astute doctor recognized that persistent flu like symptoms in a Massachusetts man could be brucellosis, prompting state public health officials to investigate Twin Rivers Farm in Ashley Falls. The patient purchased raw milk from the farm in late December and officials are urging any other customers to discard the product. It is not sold at retail stores.

Brucellosis is an infectious disease primarily from animal to animal, but it can be acquired by humans through consumption of raw milk. The disease can become more serious and infect the central nervous system or organs and can cause long-lasting or chronic symptoms that include recurrent fevers, joint pain, and fatigue.

State epidemiologist Dr. Alfred DeMaria said no other human infections have been reported. Tests for the bacteria brucella in the man who is suspected of having the bug are expected to be complete next week.

Brucellosis is not very common in the United States, where 100 to 200 cases occur each year, but brucellosis can be very common in countries where animal disease control programs have not reduced the amount of disease among animals. The U.S. has worked hard to do that.
 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

A Minnesota high school science class received an inadvertent lesson in microbiology and pathology when 29 of 117 students in five class periods were sickened with E. coli O103:H2 traced to deer they shot, field-dressed, butchered, marinated and consumed as part of a class project.

The outbreak happened in the fall of 2010 after teachers oversaw a student  hunt for six whitetails. A seventh deer was gathered from the scene of a roadside accident and cleaned to make kabobs, like the others. The bamboo skewers were marinated in five-gallon buckets before being grilled.

The episode was studied by scientists at the Minnesota Department of Health and a paper was published in the latest edition of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

None of the 29 case patients in the outbreak suffered hemolytic uremic sydrome (HUS), a complication of toxic E. coli infection that shuts down a person's kidneys and can lead to stroke, heart attack, neurological damage and other severe illness.

Interviews with students in the class showed that hand-washing after handling raw venison was a factor in preventing E. coli transmission. Some mistakes that led to illness included using the same plate for handling raw and cooked venison and undercooking the meat.

The researchers did not identify the high school by name or location. The kids who got sick started to show symptoms a little more than two days after they prepared and ate the venison. If your child was sickened in the Minnesota high school deer E. coli outbreak of 2010, you may contact a food illness lawyer at PritzkerOlsen, P.A., for a free case consultation at 1-888-377-8900 (Toll Free) Our firm currently represents E. coli victims from other outbreaks and we are one of the very few law firms in the country practicing extensively in the area of foodborne illness litigation. Our offices are located in Minneapolis.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

An outbreak of foodborne illness that has sickened at least 40 people in Duluth is being investigated by the Minnesota Department of health (MDH), according to the StarTribune.

Those who became ill were among 350 guests who attended a wedding at the Greysolon Ballroom last weekend, so there could be additional cases, an MDH spokesman Doug Schultz told the Duluth News Tribune. The investigation is ongoing.

The food served at the event was provided by Greysolon Ballroom By Blackwoods. Sean Stepan, the controller of its parent group, New London Corp., referred reporter’s questions to MDH. 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Nationally recognized food safety lawyer Fred Pritzker has been elected to the Board of Directors of STOP Foodborne Illness, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to the prevention of illness and death from foodborne pathogens.

STOP Foodborne Illness, formerly S.T.O.P. Safe Tables Our Priority, is a national nonprofit health organization dedicated to preventing illness and death from foodborne pathogens by advocating for sound public policy, building public awareness and assisting those whose lives have been changed by foodborne illness.

“The tragedy of a foodborne illness is often magnified by the ease with which it could have been prevented,” said Pritzker, founder and president of PritzkerOlsen P.A., one of the nation’s leading food safety law firms. “At STOP Foodborne Illness, prevention is the focus. I’m honored to be joining them and look forward to contributing to the good work they do.”

STOP was created in 1993 by a group of people whose children and family members had been sickened or died from E. coli infections they contracted after eating at Jack in the Box restaurants.

Along with its partners in the Safe Food Coalition, STOP has become a major voice on food safety issues and a catalyst for change. In 1996, STOP was invited to help craft the nation’s first meat and poultry reforms since 1906. The organization also played a key role in crating the Food Safety Modernization Act, which President Obama signed into law in February 2011.
 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Improving food safety in the United States requires greater collaboration among federal agencies and continued study of consolidation to provide more integrated oversight, according to the latest report on food safety regulation by the General Accounting Office (GAO).

The report, obtained by food safety law firm PritzkerOlsen, P.A.,  recommends that the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, in consultation with the federal agencies that have food safety responsibilities, should develop a government-wide performance plan for food safety.

"The performance plan should include results-oriented goals and performance measures for food safety oversight throughout the federal government, as well as a discussion about strategies and resources. It should be updated on an annual basis,'' the report said.

President Obama's Food Safety Working Group, which started in 2009, received positive notice by the GAO. The creation of the working group "elevated food safety as a national priority, demonstrated strong commitment and top leadership support, and was designed to foster interagency collaboration,'' the report said. But still undeveloped is a performance plan for food safety that provides a comprehensive picture of the federal government's dispersed food safety efforts. The working group's July 2009 "key findings" was not "results oriented,'' nor did it include performance measures, the GAO report said.

Any review should consider alternative organizational structures, such as a single food safety agency, a single food safety inspection agency and a data collection and risk analysis center, according to the GAO. In other words, and as the title of the report says: "The Food Safety Working Group is a Positive First Step but Government-wide Planning is Needed to Address Fragmentation.''

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Said Taylor: "The recruitment of a chief medical officer and director of outbreaks here is part of an effort to really transform the way we think about and manage and learn from outbreaks in our effort to build a prevention-oriented food safety program.'' The food safety official told CIDRAP that FDA is putting together a permanent team to work on foodborne outbreaks of E. coli, Salmonella, Campylobacter and other pathogens. The team of about 40 will work full time on outbreaks, not as a side duty, and they also will perform postmortem work in the aftermath of outbreaks to look for lessons of prevention.

National food safety lawyer Fred Pritzker said the development is good news for consumers who become victims of foodborne illness outbreaks because it is impossible in some cases to file a food poisoning lawsuit unless public health authorities have linked an outbreak to a cause. "The better we become at outbreak detection, the more we can do for victims of food poisoning,'' Pritzker said. "Increased accountability and transparency will make our food supply safer in the long run.''

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Seven states received an "A" letter grade while 14 others received an "F" for their performance in detecting and reporting outbreaks of foodborne illness. The analysis, based on 10 years of outbreak data kept by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was published this week by the respected non-profit health advocacy organization known as Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

The findings reinforce conventional wisdom among food safety experts, including food poisoning lawyers who represent victims of E. coli, Salmonella, Campylobacter, Listeria and other types of bacteria. Generally speaking, states that report a lot of outbreaks are tops at linking clusters of foodborne illnesses to the source of contamination. By contrast, those states that hardly report any outbreaks don't seem to put much effort into it. CSPI said state public health investigations of foodborne illness are vital to quantifying the problem on a national scale and subsequently developing prevention strategies.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

 E. coli HUS lawsuits and other foodborne illness litigation will be discussed by food safety lawyer Fred Pritzker and two other attorneys with expertise in lawsuits resulting from outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 and other dangerous human pathogens.

Pritzker is founder and president of PritzkerOlsen, P.A., a leading national practitioner of foodborne illness litigation. He currently represents multiple individuals and families in lawsuits and other legal actions stemming from infections of E. coli 0157:H7, non-O157:H7 E. coli strains, Salmonella and Campylobacter jejuni. One recent E. coli 0157:H7 lawsuit filed by the firm's local counsel in Arizona is on behalf of an Arizona family sickened in the Bravo Farms cheese E. coli outbreak of late 2010. The contaminated Gouda cheese (since recalled) was sampled and sold in Costco stores in Arizona, Colorado, California, New Mexico and Arizona. PritzkerOlsen represents seven people sickened in the cheese E. coli outbreak.

Mr. Pritzker will appear January 21, 2011, at  the Northeastern University Law Journal's annual symposium: "From Seed to Stomach: Food and Farming Law." The symposium will focus on recent legal developments in the areas of food and farming law, including intellectual property and genetically-modified foods, sustainable economic farming, and food labeling and consumption. The symposium will take place on Northeastern's campus in Boston and the three-lawyer panel featuring Mr. Pritzker will be called "Inside Foodborne Illness Litigation.'' Jason Sapsin, former associate chief counsel for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, also is scheduled to participate in the panel discussion.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Food safety upgrades under the new law signed by President Obama are spelled out in an open letter from  Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

What follows here is her boiled-down list of specific improvements and mandates under the Food Safety Modernization Act:

• Processors of all types of food will now be required to evaluate the hazards in their operations, implement and monitor effective measures to prevent contamination and have a plan in place to take any corrective actions that are necessary.
• FDA will have much more effective enforcement tools for ensuring those plans are adequate and properly implemented, including mandatory recall authority when needed to swiftly remove contaminated food from the market.
• FDA will establish science-based standards for the safe production and harvesting of fruits and vegetables to minimize the risk of serious illnesses or death.
• FDA will set standards for the safe transportation of food.
• All high-risk domestic facilities must be inspected within five years of enactment and no less than every three years thereafter. 
• Importers are now required to verify the safety of food from their suppliers and the FDA has authority to block foods from facilities or countries that refuse our inspection
• FDA will increase its inspection of foreign food facilities. 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

 A new report showing the high cost of foodborne illness in the United States could help solidify support for major reform in food safety law currently on the table in Washington.

On average, food poisoning costs $1,850 per case nationwide, or $152 billion annually.

"We cannot afford to waste billions of dollars fighting preventable diseases after it is too late,'' said Erik Olson, Olson, director of food and consumer product safety with the Pew Health Group. 

The Produce Safety Project, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts at Georgetown University, published the report. It was written by Robert L. Scharff, a former FDA economist who is now an assistant professor in the Department of Consumer Sciences at The Ohio State University.

Scharff said in a press release: "This study puts the problem of foodborne illness in its proper perspective and should help facilitate reasonable action designed to mitigate this problem."

 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that approximately 76 million new cases of food-related illness result in 5,000 deaths and 325,000 hospitalizations each year. 

The report, available online, uses an FDA cost-estimate approach: health-related costs are the sum of medical costs (physician services, pharmaceuticals, and hospital costs) and losses to quality of life (lost life expectancy, pain and suffering, and functional disability).

The ten states with the highest costs per case are: Hawaii, Florida, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, the District of Columbia, Mississippi, New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey. 

The report said produce is linked to the largest number of outbreaks involving FDA-regulated foods. For example, E. coli O157:H7 cases in produce accounted for 39 percent of outbreaks and 54 percent of illnesses. Using CDC data, the report estimates that foodborne illness costs related to produce alone are almost $39 billion per year in the U.S. 

The study broke out estimated health-related costs and lost productivity of chronic, or long-term effects of certain foodborne illnesses. For instance, HUS E. coli, or hemolytic uremic syndrome, is estimated to cost our society $627 million per year.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

 A federal judge in White Plains, New York, has ordered the shutdown and padlocking of a kosher poultry slaughter facility in New Square, N.Y., that federal authorities say has been selling uninspected poultry since 2002.

The action was taken yesterday by Judge Stephen C. Robinson at the request of federal prosecutors who argued that the risk of foodborne illness or death was too great to allow New Square Meats to continue.

Here is an excerpt from news reporter Timothy O'Connor's story for LoHud.com describing conditions in the facility:

"During an April visit to the plant, federal investigators said they found poultry residue on walls, light fixtures, and the manager's office. Employee restrooms had no soap or hand sanitizer while rubbish and foul-smelling pools of water were found outside the plant, according to court papers federal authorities filed.''

Attorneys for the company asked the judge for a two-week reprieve, but he denied it in light of unsanitary conditions that posed an obvious health risk to the community.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Big Boy Restaurants International of Warren, Michigan, has permanently closed a subsidiary that made ready-to-eat meal kits. The closing comes three months after Big Boy Food Group recalled 39,514 pounds of kids' meals that may have been contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

A story in  Crain's Detroit Business quoted the company as saying it spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to find the source of contamination. It had been shut down since October 23 in search of a solution. The contamination source was in equipment and It was not economically feasible to correct the problem and resume operations, the story said. 

USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced the recall September 1. It covered 3.6-ounce ham & cheese and turkey & cheese DinoLunch and Lunch Buddies meal kits. No illnesses were reported in connection with the recall, which was prompted by FSIS product testing.

Consumption of food contaminated with Listeria  can cause listeriosis, an uncommon but potentially fatal disease. Healthy people rarely contract listeriosis. However, listeriosis can cause high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness and nausea. Listeriosis can also cause miscarriages and stillbirths, as well as serious and sometimes fatal infections in those with weakened immune systems, such as infants, the elderly and persons with HIV infection or undergoing chemotherapy. Individuals concerned about an illness should contact a physician.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

A former deputy commissioner for policy at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is among those who support the idea of stripping food safety responsibility from the agency and creating a new Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services.

Michael R. Taylor, who is now research professor of health policy at the School of Public Health at George Washington University, said in a press release Wednesday that a unified and elevated management structure for food safety is needed to implement a science- and risk-based program dedicated to preventing foodborne illness.

Taylor's credentials include a stint as administrator of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

His position was announced in conjunction with the release of a new report on food safety regulation by Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The report emphasized FDA's shortcomings, saying that the vast majority of foodborne illnesses are associated with products regulated by the FDA -- including peanut butter.

The ongoing peanut butter Salmonella  outbreak has claimed nine lives and sickened more than 691 people in 46 states. It has been linked to Peanut Corporation of America, a company with faciities and operating conditions dangerous enough to prompt a Salmonella wrongful death lawsuit by national food safety law firm PritzkerOlsen Attorneys.

According to the report, a central problem at FDA is a bureacracy that includes three major food safety components that are all managed separately.

"No FDA official whose full time job is food safety hasline authority over all food safety functions,'' the report said. The three branches should immediately be consolidated at FDA, until a new Food Safety Administration can be created within the U.S. Health and Human Services, the report said. 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Share Link