This winter, scores of Americans, most of them small children or senior citizens, have already or will become deathly ill after eating ground beef boldly labeled "USDA approved."
The now infamous ConAgra case started with a few sick kids in Colorado and quickly spread coast-to-coast, eventually triggering the recall of nearly 19 million pounds of ground beef tainted with E. coli O157:H7 in July. Now Emmpak Foods recalls 400,000 pounds of tainted ground beef. However, Emmpack Foods is no stranger to E. coli. It recalled 471,000 pounds of ground beef just last May. I guess lightening can strike twice?
What we will learn about the Emmpack Foods recall is that it comes weeks late, after most of that meat has been consumed and 40 Wisconsin residents are sickened. Because these people trusted our government's food inspections, dozens are ill and some suffered kidney failure and spent days or weeks hooked up to kidney dialysis machines. For some, the long-term prognosis is grim, with the risk of further kidney failure, dialysis, transplants or worse.
I know this because I am a trial lawyer who has built a practice on food pathogens. I represented most of the severely injured children in the 2000 Sizzler E. coli outbreak in Milwaukee. Over the last ten years, I have represented hundreds of families who become devastated for doing a very American pastime - eating a hamburger. This may prompt some readers to consider me a blood-sucking ambulance chaser who exploits other people's personal tragedies.
If that is the case, here is my plea:
Put me out of business, please.
For this trial lawyer, E. coli has been a far too successful practice - and a heart-breaking one. I am tired of visiting with horribly sick kids who did not have to be sick in the first place. I am outraged with a food industry that allows E. coli and other poisons to reach consumers, and a President, Congress and federal regulatory system that does nothing about it.
Stop making kids sick - and I will happily move on. Here is how:
Actually, inspect and sample meat. At present, the USDA employs thousands of inspectors across the nation to inspect hundreds of plants that produce millions of pounds of beef at processing plants and retail outlets. The GAO has warned that the USDA's food samplings are so scattered and infrequent that there is little chance of detecting microscopic E. coli or any other pathogen.
So hire more inspectors and give them real authority to sample meat and stop its distribution as soon as a pathogen is detected. Implement a sampling system that provides a reasonable chance of preventing another outbreak. Doing so might add a nickel a pound - maybe less - to the price of hamburger. However, it will also cut into my business. Moreover, isn't that the idea?
Consider mandatory recall authority. This authority is required in Sen. Tom Harkin's Safer Meat, Poultry and Foods Act of 2002 (named Kevin's law for a young boy who died of E. coli in Wisconsin last year). Under the present system of voluntary recalls, no company has actually refused to recall contaminated product. However, in its recent report, the GAO did document several instances where companies delayed complying with recall requests. Delays mean tainted product has more time to reach consumers.
Require the meat industry to document where specific lots of food are sold. That way, it can be recalled quickly if a pathogen is detected. In most E. coli outbreaks, there is no recall because retailers do not know where the meat came from and processors rarely step forward. Timely online records would allow meat to be efficiently tracked down and recalled as soon as inspectors get a positive test result.
Merge the two federal agencies responsible for food safety. Right now, USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service and the inspection arm of the Food and Drug Administration share this mission. The system is bifurcated, which leads to turf wars and split responsibilities. We need one independent agency that deals with food-borne pathogens.
Finally, large purchasers of meat - fast food industry, grocery store chains, and yes, the USDA - must require the meat industry to produce high quality, pathogen lessened, meat. Can you imagine the power they can put on slaughterhouses to clean up this mess?
None of this will stop E. coli entirely. This invisible poison has been around a long time and is bound to pop up again. However, these steps will enable us to detect it far more quickly, to alert stores and families, and to keep our most vulnerable citizens - kids and seniors - out of harm's way.
And, with a little luck, it will force one damn trial lawyer to find another line of work.
Posted on January 7, 2005 by Marler Lawyer
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Dinesh Ramde of Minneapolis Associated Press reported in "Man sues ConAgra over pot pie tainted with salmonella," on our client Eric J. Mand of Malone of Fond du Lac County who bought a ConAgra Banquet pot pie in mid-September. A few days after eating one, he became so sick with severe gastrointestinal symptoms that he required hospital care on two separate days. Today we filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin a lawsuit on his behalf. I am on my way to Salt Lake City to mediate Dole Spinach E. coli cases, so one of my crack associates stepped into the media void:
Mr. Ramde also reported that my firm, “Marler Clark, based in Seattle, has filed six other lawsuits against ConAgra in connection with the pot pie recall. The others were filed on behalf of residents of Michigan, Minnesota and Nebraska, as well as three in Washington.” We have been retained by 20 others. According to the CDC, at least 272 isolates of Salmonella I 4,[5],12:i:- with an indistinguishable genetic fingerprint have been collected from ill persons in 35 states. Ill persons whose Salmonella strain has this genetic fingerprint have been reported from Arizona (1 person), Arkansas (4), California (18), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (5), Florida (2), Georgia (2), Idaho (11), Illinois (7), Indiana (3), Iowa (1), Kansas (4), Kentucky (9), Massachusetts (7), Maryland (7), Maine (2), Michigan (3), Minnesota (7), Missouri (18), Montana (6), Nevada (6), New York (10), North Carolina (2), Ohio (11), Oklahoma (1), Oregon (4), Pennsylvania (18), Tennessee (6), Texas (4), Utah (12), Virginia (9), Vermont (2), Washington (27), Wisconsin (24), Wyoming (3).
To date, we have filed six lawsuits against ConAgra stemming from this Salmonella outbreak. We presently represent nearly two dozen people throughout the United States. Today we are in the ConAgra Pot Pie Manufacturing Facility in Marshall, Missouri inspecting the plant. As my readers might recall, the CDC has published its preliminary findings on the scope of the outbreak involving ConAgra’s Banquet Pot Pies and other private label brands such as Wal-Mart’s Great Value. The USDA's Inspection Report has yet to be released to the public.
You may already be aware of this but just in case you aren’t I’ll pass this along. I received information yesterday that there has been another illness reported that is associated with product from the ConAgra plant in Marshall, MO. This is a lab-confirmed report of Salmonella is associated with consumption of a Banquet Turkey Meal. There was a previous similar complaint reported in October that was not lab-confirmed. Both previous and present complaints apparently involve the Banquet Turkey Meal with a sell by/use by date of January 2009. The product is a 9.25 oz “Turkey Meal”. I have not seen a label from this product but I am told it says turkey meal, mostly white meat with gravy, dressing, mashed potatoes and peas. The complainant is apparently located in North Carolina and purchased the product at a local supermarket.
Standing in the New Orleans Airport yesterday afternoon, I had a nice chat with Mark Morey of the Yakima Herald about the status of the ConAgra Salmonella Peanut Butter litigation (
I am sitting at home not wanting to head to the airport for a trip to New Orleans (it is Thanksgiving weekend anyway) to meet with lawyers and insurers from ConAgra (sounds fun?). I must admit that I am skeptical of the meeting given that to date ConAgra has resolved no claims of any significance However, there seems to be some recent interest in resolving the thousands of legitimate customer claims. Given that ConAgra is facing legal defense bills of seven figures each month, has incurred some $50-60 million in recall cost - and who knows how much in lost sales - and now faces more of the same in Pot Pies, perhaps it will get serious and take care of its customers..jpg)
So, wish me luck (or a bit of magic) on the flight. More importantly, however, wish ConAgra the wisdom to understand that its future success is tied to taking care of its poisoned customers and in making a serious commitment to food safety. ConAgra needs to remember that it is no "Big" deal, in fact it is "Easy," to do the right thing. If taking care of customers is too hard, ConAgra also needs to remember the FDA inspection of 2005:.gif){kind=small}
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I had a nice chat with Mike Keefe-Feldman of the Missoula Independent about John Munsell, the owner of Montana Quality Foods meat packing plant, who is suing the USDA. As the Independent puts it, it's a lawsuit which "if successful, could bring about the most significant changes to America's meat-inspection system since the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 tried to limit the amount of crap one could legally shovel into a sausage."
In a tragic story of how our food system fails families, Madeline Drexler's article 
