Doris Flatgard; 3rd Minnesotan to Die in Salmonella Outbreak
Fred Pritzker, president and founder of national food safety law firm Pritzker | Olsen, P.A., has been chosen to represent the families of two Minnesotans who died in the Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak that has sickened more than 500 people in 43 states. Federal officials say the outbreak may be associated with eight deaths, including three in Minnesota.
On Monday, Pritzker filed a peanut butter Salmonella wrongful death lawsuit against Virginia-based Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) on behalf of the heirs of Shirley Mae Almer, 72, of Perham. Mrs. Almer died Dec. 21 after consuming contaminated peanut butter made by PCA that had been shipped to the nursing home in Brainerd where she was temporarily residing.
Since the suit was filed in Hennepin County District Court, Pritzker also has been chosen to represent the family of Doris Flatgard. Mrs. Flatgard, 87, formerly of the Bergen, Minn., area, died January 4, the third Minnesotan to die in the outbreak. She resided in the Good Samaritan Society-Oakwood nursing home in Brainerd. Pritzker said she regularly ate peanut butter and toast for breakfast.
All three Minnesotans who have died in the outbreak, including 78-year-old Clifford Tousignant of Duluth, were residing in Good Samaritan long-term care facilities in Brainerd, though each lived in a different building.
The nursing homes were using peanut butter that was later recalled by Peanut Corporation of America after Minnesota health investigators confirmed that it contained Salmonella that genetically matched the strain of bacteria alive in the outbreak.
Pritzker has reviewed the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspection recordsfor the Peanut Corporation of America’s Blakely, Georgia, plant implicated in the national Salmonella outbreak. In ten separate observations, the FDA inspectors noted a series of shocking sanitation violations including:
- Shipping product after it tested positive for at two separate Salmonella subtypes
- Failure to clean and sanitize the peanut paste production line after Salmonella was isolated from the product produced on that line
- Failure to confirm the effectiveness of the heating process designed to kill pathogenic bacteria (including Salmonella) during the production process (the so-called “kill step)
- Failure to safety store finished product (product that had already been subject to the kill step was stored in close proximity to raw product) and failure to properly clean storage areas)
- Failure to properly construct and maintain the plant’s roof (resulting in huge gaps that allow rainwater to seep into the plant and onto production areas)
- Failure to use production equipment capable of being properly cleaned
- Failure to use a negative pressure ventilation system (negative room pressure would direct air flow away from the finished product areas) and failure to segregate raw and finished product
- Failure to have properly designated hand cleaning sinks
- Failure to properly clean utensils and food production equipment
- Failure to prevent insect and pest contamination
Pritzker said the findings show a callous disregard for consumer health and disease prevention. Worse, he said, these violations are not isolated in time. They appear to have existed for months if not years. And that raises an equally disturbing issue: Where were the inspectors before the outbreak occurred? Why weren’t test results reported to state officials? Why were these conditions ignored for such a long period of time?
“The answer is simple, but shocking: There is no uniform system of inspection and testing that applies to plants like this one. There are also insufficient funds allocated for funding existing inspection and testing programs. This has to change. The United States Congress has to pass and the President has to sign legislation that prevents this gross violation of sanitation from ever happening again,” Pritzker said.
