E. coli outbreak highlights the importance of food safety

Oct 24 2009

Two students from Lincoln Middle School in Lincoln, Rhode Island were hospitalized several days after a field trip to Camp Bournedale in Plymouth, Massachusetts earlier this month. Several other students were also sickened.

Two of the students who attended the camp have tested positive for E. coli O157:H7, a serious illness that can lead to severe dehydration and hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), the leading cause of kidney failure in children in the United States.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the USDA are investigating foods at the camp as the likely source of this illness, according to the Rhode Island Department of Health.

The USDA involvement suggests that the source of this outbreak is contaminated meat served at Camp Bournedale. If so, these children were sickened because the slaughterhouse and/or the processor of the meat allowed cattle feces to get into the meat and did not do enough testing to discover the contamination. In addition, the camp, if it is involved, did not cook the meat well enough to kill the E. coli bacteria. Many adults failed these children.

"The American public should not have to guess about the safety of food served to children," said Attorney Fred Pritzker, one of the nation's most experienced practitioners of foodborne illness litigation.

Pritzker's national food safety law firm has represented victims of most major E. coli outbreaks in the United States. “More resources must be devoted to federal food safety. The current system is undermined by too much fragmentation of responsibility and not enough coordination between federal, state and local agencies,” Pritzker said.

"One also has to wonder if microbiological testing is lax," Pritzker said. "Ground beef and other meat products should not be allowed to leave the manufacturer unless their safety is confirmed. Eating a hamburger should not be a high-risk activity.”