Last week, Attorney Fred Pritzker served as the keynote speaker at the 1st Annual Desert Produce Safety Collaborative Field Conference in Yuma, Arizona. The day long summit brought together food safety professionals from a variety of Arizona institutions, with the purpose of educating them about the various aspects of food safety, topics ranged from microbiology 101 to a mock field audit.
Pritzker’s presentation titled, “Prosecution of a Foodborne Illness Claim: Holding Wrongdoers Accountable,” kick-started the day outlining how a law firm prosecutes foodborne illness claims. The presentation used specific pathogens to illustrate the manner in which a prosecutor establishes proof of fault and causation in a foodborne illness claim. The 2011 Jensen Farms Listeria outbreak, a multi-state outbreak involving cantaloupe that resulted in the deaths of 33 people, was highlighted as an example of an illness outbreak and fueled discussions of third party liability.
Fred Pritzker has been an advocate for food safety for over 30 years. Together with his Bad Bug Law team Pritzker has won hundreds of millions of dollars for people injured by tainted food products during his career.