E coli Infection Kills Cleveland Girl - New Food Safety Laws Needed
On Sunday, a seven-year-old girl died from an E. coli infection that may be linked to an E. coli outbreak associated with consuming ground beef produced by Valley Meats LLC. In response to this outbreak, the company recalled over 95,000 pounds of ground beef products that had been sold to restaurants and food service accounts.
When ground beef tests positive for E. coli O157:H7, it means cow feces got ground in with the meat. There are sanitation measures that meat producers can take to prevent this. When E. coli-contaminated ground beef is distributed, it means the producer did not test the meat for E. coli or sent it out even though it did test positive for E. coli. When ground beef (usually hamburgers) cooked by a restaurant transmits E. coli to a customer, it means the restaurant did not cook the meat adequately because E. coli can be killed with heat.
This little girl’s death was preventable, and the companies that are responsible should pay. Contact E. coli lawyers at Pritzker Olsen, a national E. coli litigation law firm, for information on compensation for E. coli victims and their families: 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or submit our free consultation form for review by an attorney.
In addition to fighting for the best possible compensation package for E. coli victims and their families, our attorneys support changes in law and policy that will help prevent E. coli outbreaks.
When Safe Tables Our Priority (S.T.O.P.) called needing a family member of a food poisoning victim to testify before Congress, we arranged to have one of our clients go to Washington and tell Congress about his mother who died from Salmonella poisoning. Congress and the population in general need to know that we have a food safety crisis in this country and that people are dying.
We are asking all of our readers to contact their federal legislators to tell them we don’t want any more seven-year-olds to die because they ate ground beef or any other food product.
Make Our Food Safe, an organization dedicated to promoting food safety, has a list of requirements aimed at protecting the public health that Congress should consider:
- Risk-based inspection, including a minimum annual inspection frequency. Legislation should set as a minimum requirement that FDA-regulated facilities be inspected at least once a year, with higher-risk facilities inspected more frequently.
- Testing and sampling by food processors and mandatory reporting to the government of any test results showing harmful contamination. Requiring food processors to continuously sample and test their products for contamination and to report test results that indicate contamination are critical measures that can help officials prevent foodborne-illness outbreaks.
- Development by food processors of plans that proactively identify where contamination may occur, and include steps to prevent contamination. Under existing law, FDA does not have clear authority to require food processors to take action to prevent food-safety problems.
- Adoption of science-based standards for processed foods and fresh produce. The government must set public-health based limits on pathogen contamination in processed food. Fresh produce items have been linked to many recent outbreaks, and there is widespread agreement among growers, consumers, and other stakeholders that there need to be mandatory federal safety standards for these commodities.
- Making sure that imported foods meet the same safety standards as those applied to food produced in the U.S. With an increasingly greater percentage of our food being imported from other countries, it is critical that FDA have the authority and resources to establish and enforce safety requirements for imported food.
- Recall authority and effective penalties – FDA must be given authority to mandate recalls -- something it does not have under existing law – as well as the power to levy serious fines (and not just fines that are a “cost of doing business”) on food manufacturers that refuse to correct unsafe practices.
- Structural changes that make food safety-related functions more effective. Food safety activities at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are spread across numerous centers at the Department and within FDA. Legislation must, at a minimum, unify and elevate within HHS FDA’s food safety policy, inspection and enforcement activities.
We also agree with Make Our Food Safe that the FDA and USDA-FSIS must also be given sufficient resources to better ensure the safety of the food supply.
If you would like a free consultation with an E. coli lawyer, please contact Pritzker Olsen Attorneys: 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or submit our free consultation form for review by an attorney.
