Marler Blog : Food Poisoning Lawyer & Attorney : Bill Marler : Marler Clark

Knox Times-Tribune staff writer Heather Cole wrote, “the death of a Knox County woman is under investigation and E. coli O157:H7 bacteria is believed to be the source of her illness. Vickie Shelton, 47, died Monday afternoon at Central Baptist Hospital in Lexington after being admitted.” She also wrote “officials at the U.S. Department of Heath in Fayette County are testing samples of ground beef Shelton had reportedly consumed prior to becoming sick. American Foods Group (AFG) of Green Bay, Wisconsin issued the recall on products produced in October and reportedly shipped to retailers and distributors in seven states including Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Virginia. The recall, issued November 24, is a class 1 recall with health risks listed as “high.” The problem was discovered through an investigation into two illnesses that was initiated by the Illinois Department of Public Health.

As I wrote in a previous blog post:

We have seen this all before. In December 1998, a recall was issued for 1,000 pounds of beef manufactured by AFG and distributed to Cub Foods stores in the Chicago, Illinois area after random testing showed that meat in one of the stores was contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. In December 1999, a recall of ground beef was made after government inspectors found contamination at the AFG plant. In December 2000, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) issued a press release stating that 17 Minnesota citizens had been infected with the same strain of the E. coli O157:H7 bacteria during November 2000. On December 4, FSIS, stated in a Class I alert that Green Bay Dressed Beef, the meat supplier doing business as AFG, was, at the suggestion of the FSIS, recalling 1.1 million pounds of contaminated ground beef. Yet another recall, this time for over 500,000 pounds of ground beef manufactured by AFG, occurred in August 2001.

I am beginning to loose track of how many illnesses have been caused by E. coli-contaminated hamburger this year (must be well over 1,000 officially reported) and how much meat has been recalled this year (must be in excess of 32,000,000 pounds).  And, "we have the safest food in the world?"  I say, Bull#%^*!

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"We believe in caring for our customers and caring for our employees. That will not change."
                Tom Rosen, Co-Chairman of American Foods Group, LLC

Oh, Really?  I guess lightning can strike more than once in the same spot!



American Foods Group, LLC (AFG), a Green Bay, Wisconsin firm, is recalling approximately 95,927 pounds of various coarse and fine ground beef products because they are contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today. The ground beef products subject to recall were produced on Oct. 10, 2007, and were distributed to retail establishments and distributors in Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Virginia. The problem was discovered through an investigation into two illnesses that was initiated by the Illinois Department of Public Health.   That is how the USDA figures out outbreaks - send the contaminated meat into the market place and see if people get sick - the American pubic, canaries in the coal mine.  I wonder if AFG did any "test and hold?"

The FSIS web site also reflects that American Foods Group (AFG) is a processing establishment, and does not slaughter. The web site also shows that the establishment is part of a conglomerate which also owns Green Bay Dressed Beef, which has more than one establishment, one of which is Est # 410 in Green Bay, which does slaughter.  Green Bay Dressed Beef had a Mad Cow scare in August 2005.

Unfortunately for AFG's customers this was not an isolated occurrence.  We have seen this all before.  In December 2000, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) issued a press release stating that 17 Minnesota citizens had been infected with the same strain of the E. coli O157:H7 bacteria during November 2000.  On December 4, FSIS, stated in a Class I alert that Green Bay Dressed Beef, the meat supplier doing business as AFG, was, at the suggestion of the FSIS, recalling 1.1 million pounds of contaminated ground beef.  One of the young children we represented developed Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS).

Also, In December 1998, another recall was issued for 1,000 pounds of beef manufactured by AFG and distributed to Cub Foods stores in the Chicago, Illinois area after random testing showed that meat in one of the stores was contaminated with E. coli O157:H7.  Again, in December 1999, a recall of ground beef was made after government inspectors found contamination at the AFG plant.  Yet another recall,  this time for over 500,000 pounds of ground beef manufactured by AFG, occurred in August 2001.  In that outbreak we represented five people.

Jennifer Smith Richards of the Columbus Dispatch weighed in on the recent AFG recall in an article “More beef might be tainted, states told.”  AFG's shocking indifference is concerning:

"It's something that, unfortunately, happens with a raw product like ground beef," said Jim Mulhern, a spokesman for American Foods Group. "It's not 100 percent preventable....  One of the problems with these recalls is American Foods Group doesn't know where it was eventually sold," Mulhern said.

One more "beef" of mine - It is an agreement between USDA and industry — USDA will not disclose the names of slaughter houses without a positive test “above the grinder” - which is why there is no mention of where the meat came from that was ground by AFG in this latest recall.  Also, on the "downside" of the grinder - on the retail side - there is also an agreement between USDA and industry to not disclose “proprietary information” - which includes where the contaminated meat was sold.  Health Departments have to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to not disclose that information to the public in order to get the information from USDA.  Welcome to my world — ever read Kafka?  I put some of my thought on this recall out in a press release.

The following products are subject to this most recent recall:

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Marler Clark has settled with Supervalu and American Foods Group on behalf of the parents of Sonja Pearson, a young girl who became seriously ill after eating E. coli-contaminated ground beef that was supplied by AFG to Supervalu's Cub Foods subsidiary.

More than 40 people in the Upper Midwest became ill during the E. coli outbreak in December 2000, including Pearson, who was then 2 years old and incurred medical bills for $ 220,000 during a month-long hospital stay for kidney failure caused by the contaminated meat.

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In a tragic story of how our food system fails families, Madeline Drexler's article "What She Ate Almost Killed Her" for Good Housekeeping paints the painful tale of one little girl's battle with death, all because she ate a hamburger.

On June 30, 2002, ConAgra recalled 354,200 pounds of ground beef. On July 16, Kristi Thacker purchased a five-pound package of ConAgra ground beef, packaged under a store-brand name, from her local grocery store. Three days later ConAgra expanded its recall, but Kristi Thacker didn't hear about the recall until early September, about a month after she cooked the contaminated meat and fed it to her family. On August 14, five-year-old Savana Thacker got sick. Within a week, she was hospitalized with kidney and liver failure, complications of HUS caused by E. coli toxins poisoning her young body.

"Usually, I take things as they roll," Kristi says now. "But this time, I literally felt ill." Her husband, Shelby, got mad. "He wanted to know why, where, how. Who could have done this to us?"

For one, recalls are voluntary: No federal agency can order a manufacturer to pull a contaminated food product from the market, with the exception of infant formula; it can only request that the item be removed.

More alarming, the process is shrouded in secrecy. You may hear the name of the manufacturer mentioned on a TV report or read about it in the paper. But unless your local market chooses to identify itself, you won't learn that the store has sold potentially lethal meat. It is no surprise, then, that only a small percentage of recalled foods is ever accounted for. The rest may have already been consumed or disposed of by the retailer or restaurant. Or it may wait in freezers in private homes.

We've seen these tragic cases in children before. A year before Savana got sick, two-year-old Kevin Kowalcyk died from a strain of E. coli that matched that from a recalled batch of meat manufactured by Green Bay Dressed Beef (which does business under the name American Foods Group). When his mother tried to find out where the firm had distributed the meat, she was stonewalled by state health officials.

Last July, with no other way to get the information, her attorney, William Marler, filed a lawsuit against American Foods Group and against the grocery store where Barbara regularly bought ground beef. "It is ridiculous that a grieving family would have to jump through the number of hoops we've had to, to find out what made our son sick," Barbara says. "They don't understand that when something like this happens to your child, you need to know."

Until our government changes its system, kids will continue to die from the dangerous dishes served to them at family meals, school lunches, fast food establishments. We've seen kids with HUS sickened and killed from E. coli contaminated hamburger, juice, milk, spinach. It's everywhere, and until the government sets higher standards, requires regular inspections and makes recalls mandatory, eating will continue to be a dangerous game for the American family.

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