National E. coli attorney Fred Pritzker represents people sickened after eating raw sprouts. He is now calling on restaurants, commercial kitchens and other food service providers to cease serving raw sprouts of any kind unless an explicit food safety warning is provided on menus.
“More than a decade of concentrated effort by regulators and sprout suppliers has failed to make raw sprouts safe to eat,” said Pritzker.” The latest of far too many outbreaks has sickened customers of the sandwich chain Jimmy John’s in Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Wisconsin and Arkansas. Officials suspect E. coli O26 contamination of seeds sold to growers.“
Late last week, Michigan public health officials issued a statewide alert for citizens to avoid eating raw clover sprouts due to an outbreak of E. coli O26 associated with seven illnesses, including at least two victims who are confirmed to be part of the food poisoning at Jimmy John’s. We contacted the Michigan Department of Community Health, and they said it will be several days before all of the test results are back for the 5 suspected cases. We will keep you updated on any news of this outbreak.
“The victims of the E. coli O26 outbreak suffered severe pain due to a collapse of food safety measures,” said Pritzker, one of four national figures chosen to debate the dangers of raw milk earlier this month at Harvard University. “If consumers are going to be put in harm’s way, justice demands they be forewarned. An explicit public warning that alerts consumers to the risk of life-threatening virulent bacteria should be mandatory.”
Toxic E. coli is the latest pathogen to contaminate sprouts in a multi-state outbreak, but Salmonella and Listeria also have a history of harboring in sprouts sold into the food supply. A sprout E. coli outbreak centered in Germany last year killed more than 50 people and sent more than 840 to the hospital with hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).
In just the past three years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has publicly tracked six separate sprout outbreaks that have sickened more than 4,500 people. And by the government’s own admission, FDA guidelines for seed suppliers and sprout growers would not have detected the strain of toxic E. coli in the Jimmy John’s outbreak.
E. coli outbreak victims and their families can contact attorney Fred Pritzker by calling us at 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or by submitting our free consultation form. Our law firm that has collected millions for E. coli food poisoning victims throughout the United States.