Food Poisoning Lawyer & Attorney : Marler Clark : Food Poison Journal

From February through May of 2009, the CDC counted 235 confirmed victims of a Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak linked to alfalfa sprouts.  Here is the distribution of confirmed cases in the outbreak:

Nebraska was the hardest hit state by far, with 111 confirmed illnesses, many of whom consumed alfalfa sprouts on sandwiches from Jimmy John's restaurants.  South Dakota had the second most illnesses with 38. 

Investigating health authorities ultimately determined that sprout seeds distributed by a major seed distribution company called Caudill Seed (Louisville , KY) had been contaminated with Salmonella. 

The outbreak occurred in two phases.  The first phase, causing illness primarily in the midwest, occurred in February and March 2009, and the contaminated sprouts were grown by CW Sprouts, an Omaha Nebraska company.  The chlorine treatment methods used by CW Sprouts were inadequate to eliminate the bacteria from the contaminated seeds that Caudill Seed had distributed to CW. 

The second phase of the outbreak occurred shortly after the first, causing Salmonella infection by genetically indistinguishable bacteria from the CW Sprouts phase of the outbreak.  But CW Sprouts did not distribute to many of the states affected by the second phase.  The sprouts implicated in the second phase had been grown by multiple sprout growers from seeds produced and sold by Caudill Seed.  In fact, the seeds in both phases of this large outbreak came from the same lot (032) of Caudill's seeds.

Marler Clark represents nine people in this outbreak, mostly from the State of Nebraska.  Three lawsuits have been filed. 

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We have filed two lawsuits on behalf of two victims of the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak linked to sprouts manufactured by CW Sprouts, a Nebraska Company.  For information about the outbreak, click here.  Keep in mind, studies have shown that the actual number of victims in any given outbreak is many times more than the number of culture-confirmed "cases"--i.e. by stool or blood test.  Some people don't seek medical attention, but are no less infected by the bacterium or virus; and some, like one of our clients in Colorado, are sick enough to have their intestines spilled out onto the operating table but their stool tests are negative.  Bottom line, you are no less a victim of an outbreak merely because your stool sample is not positive for Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, hepatitis A, or any other bacterium or virus associated with foodpoisoning, assuming you have an epidemiological relationship to the outbreak.  Bottom line in the CW Sprouts outbreak, there may be hundreds sick across the midwest due to Salmonella-contaminated sprouts.

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It never ceases to amaze many clients of ours at Marler Clark how foods that seem so healthy can pose so much risk of foodborne disease.  Lettuce and E. coli O157:H7???  Many victims were shocked, not to mention badly injured, when baby spinach was the cause of yet another outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 and other pathogens associated with leafy greens during the 2006 spinach outbreak. 

Sprouts are another case in point.  We've all had them, and most of us have never been sick from them, but there are hundreds of victims across the mid-west who cannot say the same thing.  Here is an interesting article on how sprouts are grown and harvested, and why they are such a risky food to eat, especially for young children, the elderly, or the immune compromised. 

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