Salmonella Egg Outbreak Facilities Inspected by Pritzker Olsen Attorneys
MINNEAPOLIS, Oct.8, 2010—Salmonella attorneys from food safety law firm Pritzker Olsen have inspected the Hillandale Farms and Wright County Egg facilities, which were at the center of a nationwide Salmonella Enteritidis outbreak late this summer and early fall. The two Iowa egg producers were linked to the August recall of more than 500 million eggs and 1,600 illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Pritzker Olsen represents dozens of clients throughout the United States sickened in this outbreak. The firm filed the first egg lawsuit in Minnesota on behalf of a woman sickened in June after eating at Mi Rancho, a Bemidji restaurant that served eggs purchased from Hillandale Farms. The case was filed in Beltrami County District Court (no. 04-CV-10-3168). Pritzker Olsen food safety attorneys continue to take on new cases related to this outbreak.
Attorneys Brendan Flaherty and Ryan Osterholm hired a poultry processing and products microbiology expert to accompany them in the inspection of the egg production facilities at Hillandale Farms in New Hampton, Iowa and Wright County Egg in Galt, Iowa, on Sept. 30 and Oct. 5, respectively.
“It was important for us to personally inspect these facilities and have our expert document the numerous food safety violations that the Food and Drug Administration found there,” Flaherty said. “Seeing firsthand the conditions that led to our clients’ illnesses allows us to prove their cases and see that they are compensated for the physical, emotional and financial hardships the contaminated eggs caused them.”
The FDA documented such unsanitary conditions as: live mice in chicken barns, numerous live and dead flies, manure piles up to eight feet high, uncaged hens tracking manure throughout the facilities, and others. Last year, Pritzker Olsen food safety attorneys also attended inspections of the Peanut Corporation of America facilities as part of their litigation on behalf of victims of the 2009 Salmonella peanut butter outbreak. The firm represents the families of three victims who died in that outbreak—more than any law firm involved in the PCA litigation. That case recently settled for $12 million.
Pritzker Olsen, P.A., of Minneapolis, Minn., has obtained some of the largest verdicts and settlements in foodborne illness cases. Attorneys Brendan Flaherty and Ryan Osterholm are available for consumer and media contact at 1-888-377-8900 (TOLL FREE). More information on the ongoing egg litigation can be found on the firm’s blog: foodpoisoning.pritzkerlaw.com.
Brendan Flaherty, 612-338-0202
brendan@pritzkerlaw.com
Ryan Osterholm, 612-338-0202
ryan@pritzkerlaw.com
Food Retailers Must Heed Recalls
Food product recalls related to the peanut butter Salmonella outbreak are still trickling in. So far, more than 3,863 food products containing potentially contaminated peanut ingredients made last year by Virginia-based Peanut Corporation of America have been recalled by food manufacturers across the country.
But what good is a recall if retailers don’t take the responsibility to pull the items from store shelves? National food safety lawyer Fred Pritzker has written about the growing and unresolved problem in a hard-hitting editorial.
By FRED PRITZKER
The whole point of a food recall is to prevent additional foodborne illness after producers and their adulterated products are identified. That’s why it’s so important for food companies, food distributors, food retailers and federal, state and local authorities to promptly and effectively remove from the marketplace any food known or reasonably certain to cause illness or death.
That’s also why there should be a special place in hell for those companies that knew or should have known a food product was dangerous but continued to sell it anyway.
The ongoing Salmonella outbreak involving Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) is a case in point. It appears from the company’s emails that its officers and employees knowingly shipped adulterated product. If so, the company’s liquidation and the criminal investigation of its principals are both necessary and fair.
But what about the downstream retailers of food products containing adulterated PCA ingredients? Aren’t they just as culpable if they fail to remove contaminated product from their shelves after they knew or should have known of the recall?
This is not an idle musing. Long after the PCA recall was announced and long after the list of adulterated products was known and accessible on a variety of web sites, retailers big and tiny continued to sell these poisonous snacks. I know because I looked.
Many of the recalled products were snack foods with long shelf lives and wide distribution. Many of the retailers who sell them are small outlets with small product stocks and unsophisticated (if any) recall procedures. For many such retailers, there is little economic justification for removing dangerous products and even less risk of public approbation for failing to do so – little consolation for the victims who continue to get sick long after the products should have been removed.
Perversely, the legal system in many states promotes such behavior. So called “pass through statutes” are intended to insulate downstream retailers from lawsuit liability if the upstream producer or manufacturer of the dangerous product is identifiable and solvent. In such cases, the retailer is automatically dismissed from litigation and bears no financial responsibility (dismissals can be avoided if the downstream retailer modified the product or otherwise actively participated in making the product defective).
So what should be done? From the standpoint of efficacy and efficiency, better product traceback and notification systems have to be designed and implemented. However, I have no illusions that any such improvements are really going to rid long lived snacks from the shelves of retailers disinclined to care all that much. What will incentivize such retailers is the threat of criminal sanctions and financial responsibility.
First, create a tight and focused criminal law that makes it a crime to sell a food product that a retailer knows or should know has been recalled. We do it for sales of liquor and cigarettes to minors; there is no reason not to do it for dangerous food products. If criminalizing the behavior is too extreme, create economic penalties by allowing consumers to prove such illegal sales and awarding them attorney fees if they’re successful. Again, there is precedent for such measures in consumer protection statutes on the books in virtually every state.
To promote food safety, everyone up and down the stream of commerce has to act and bear responsibility and should be held accountable for failing to do so.
Salmonella Saintpaul Strikes the Good Earth in Roseville
Between June 13 and June 22nd, 27 cases of Salmonella Saintpaul were reported to the Minnesota Department of Health. Those sickened had all consumed jalapeño peppers at the Good Earth restaurant in Roseville, Minnesota.
Seven of those sickened were Good Earth employees while the other 20 were customers of the restaurant.
These cases are part of a multi-state Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak that has over 1300 confirmed cases. People have been sickened in 43 states, the District of Columbia and Canada.
The FDA initially reported that tomatoes were the likely source of the outbreak. After two months, however, people were still getting sick and the FDA had not found clear evidence that tomatoes were the source of the outbreak.
People in Minnesota were not sickened until several weeks into the outbreak. It took the Minnesota Department of Health only 2 weeks to find the source of the outbreak, jalapeño peppers.
Because the Minnesota Salmonella Saintpaul cases are associated with a restaurant, those sickened may have a claim against Good Earth for medical expenses and compensation for injuries, including pain and suffering. Our Minnesota law firm is one of the leading foodborne illness litigation law firms in the United States, and we have successfully handled numerous Salmonella cases. Contact a Salmonella lawyer at our law firm.
Our Minnesota law firm has recently been featured in an article in Minnesota Lawyer, a legal publication. Read “A Full Plate: Growth in foodborne illness cases gives lawyers handling them a lot to chew on.”
Salmonella Lawsuit
On July 3, 2008, our law firm filed a lawsuit on behalf of 10 people who contracted Salmonella infections after eating at the Pars Cove Persian Cuisine booth at the 2007 Taste of Chicago.
Our law firm represents victims of foodborne illness outbreaks throughout the United States.
Press Release: Pritzker Law Firm Files Salmonella Lawsuit
Minneapolis (Business Wire) July 3, 2008 – The Pritzker law firm of Minneapolis, Minnesota and David J. Fitzpatrick & Associates, LTD., a Chicago law firm, filed a lawsuit today on behalf of ten people who became ill after eating at the Pars Cove Persian Cuisine booth at the Taste of Chicago held in Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois. Plaintiffs consumed food at the Pars Cove Persian Cuisine booth during or around June 29 through July 2, 2007. The lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois. The defendant in this case is Iran Echo International Corp., d/b/a Pars Cove East.
According to the complaint, all ten plaintiffs had Salmonella Heidelberg infections linked to hummus served at the Pars Cove Persian Cuisine booth at the Taste of Chicago. Subsequent to consuming the Pars Cove hummus, the plaintiffs fell seriously ill with gastrointestinal complaints including but not limited to nausea, abdominal cramps, headaches, diarrhea and other indicators of Salmonella poisoning.
According to the final report on this Salmonella outbreak, there were 191 laboratory-confirmed cases of Salmonella Heidelberg associated with eating at the 2007 Taste of Chicago. Health officials found the outbreak strain of Salmonella Heidelberg in patient specimens, Pars Cove hummus specimens and food worker specimens. Salmonella isolates in two separate samples of Pars Cove hummus matched the outbreak PFGE patterns.
The Pritzker law firm has been involved in most of the major foodborne illness outbreak involving Salmonella and other dangerous pathogens and has collected millions on behalf of foodborne illness survivors and the families of people killed by foodborne illness.
For additional information, please contact a Salmonella lawyer at our law firm: call toll-free at 1-888-377-8900 or submit our free case consultation form.
Our Minnesota law firm has a national reputation in the area of food poisoning litigation, and lawyers in the firm have been interviewed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other publications.
