Food Safety Inspectors Learn about Food Litigation
Last week I spoke to food safety inspectors (aka Environmental Health Officers) employed by the Fraser Health Authority (which is basically the equivalent of a county health department)in British Columbia, Canada. The day-long meeting of over 100 EHOs was the Fraser Health Authority’s Annual Environmental Health Officer Educational Day.
My presentation was about how lawyers prove food safety cases. This picture of my keynote address was taken with an Iphone.
Consumers Need to be Warned about the Dangers of Raw Milk
One of the troubling issues about the sale of raw milk is that consumers are not adequately warned about the risks. I represent people sickened by raw milk due to contamination with Campylobacter jejuni, E. coli O157:H7 and other dangerous pathogens. Raw milk can cause kidney failure, paralysis and death. I know because I have stood by the bedsides of people who innocently drank raw milk and ended up hooked up to life support fighting for their lives.
I don’t frankly care if raw milk advocates drink it at their peril. But I do care, passionately, when they harm people who are simply curious about raw milk, don’t realize their milk and dairy products are unpasteurized, are too young to protect themselves, or didn’t even consume any raw milk products (but were infected by someone who did). Since it is impossible to indulge the former and protect the latter, raw milk will remain a public health hazard. It is therefore, critical that sellers of raw milk be required by law to post information about the risks of consuming raw milk, including the risks of kidney failure, paralysis and death. This warning should be posted on every bottle of raw milk sold and on every raw milk product.
In addition, before raw milk can be distributed, sold, or in any way provided to a consumer (this includes consumers who buy a “share” in a cow), the following information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should have to be provided to the consumer:
Raw (Unpasteurized) Milk
Raw milk can carry harmful germs that can make you very sick or kill you. If you’re thinking about drinking raw milk because you believe it has health benefits, consider other options.
Trying to decide about raw milk?
Developing a healthy lifestyle is a process with many decisions and steps. One step you might be thinking about is adding raw milk to your diet. Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized to kill harmful germs. Germs include bacteria, viruses, and parasites. It’s important to understand the risks of drinking raw milk, especially because you may be hearing claims about the supposed “benefits” of raw milk.
Raw milk contains bacteria, and some of them can be harmful. So, if you’re thinking about consuming raw milk because you believe that it is a good source of beneficial bacteria, you need to know that it isn’t and you may instead get sick from the harmful bacteria. If you think that certain types of bacteria may be beneficial to your health, consider getting them from foods that don’t involve such a high risk. For example, so-called probiotic bacteria are sometimes added to pasteurized fermented foods, such as yogurt and kefir.
Milk and products made from milk need minimal processing, called pasteurization, which can be done by heating the milk briefly (for example, heating it to 161°F for about 20 seconds). When milk is pasteurized, some bacteria remain in it, but the disease-causing ones are killed. Harmful germs usually don’t change the look, taste, or smell of milk, so only when milk has been pasteurized can you be confident that these germs are not present. To ensure that milk is safe, processors rapidly cool it after pasteurization, practice sanitary handling, and store milk in clean, closed containers at 45°F or below.
Remember, you can’t look at, smell, or taste a bottle of raw milk and tell if it’s safe to drink. Make the best decision for the health of your family. If you want to keep milk in your family’s diet, protect them by not giving them raw milk. Even healthy adults can get sick from drinking raw milk. If you’re thinking about drinking raw milk because you believe it has health benefits, consider other options.
Who is at greatest risk of getting sick from drinking raw milk?
The risk of getting sick from drinking raw milk is greater for infants and young children, the elderly, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems, such as people with cancer, an organ transplant, or HIV/AIDS, than it is for healthy school-aged children and adults. But, it is important to remember that healthy people of any age can get very sick or even die if they drink raw milk contaminated with harmful germs.
What are the risks associated with drinking raw milk?
Raw milk can carry harmful bacteria and other germs that can make you very sick or kill you. While it is possible to get foodborne illnesses from many different foods, raw milk is one of the riskiest of all.
Getting sick from raw milk can mean many days of diarrhea, stomach cramping, and vomiting. Less commonly, it can mean kidney failure, paralysis, chronic disorders, and even death.
Many people who chose raw milk thinking they would improve their health instead found themselves (or their loved ones) sick in a hospital for several weeks fighting for their lives from infections caused by germs in raw milk. For example, a person can develop severe or even life-threatening diseases, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can cause paralysis, and hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can result in kidney failure and stroke.
Aren’t raw or natural foods better than processed foods?
Many people believe that foods with no or minimal processing are better for their health. Many people also believe that small, local farms are better sources of healthy food. However, some types of processing are needed to protect health. For example, consumers process raw meat, poultry, and fish for safety by cooking. Similarly, when milk is pasteurized, it is heated just long enough to kill disease-causing germs. Most nutrients remain after milk is pasteurized. There are many local, small farms that offer pasteurized organic milk and cheese products.
I’ve heard that many organic and raw milk producers are creating sanitary and humane conditions for raising animals and producing “safe” raw milk and raw milk products (like cheeses and yogurts). Does this help reduce milk contamination?
Adherence to good hygienic practices during milking can reduce, but not eliminate, the risk of milk contamination. The dairy farm environment is a reservoir for illness-causing germs. No matter what precautions farmers take, and even if their raw milk tests come back negative, they cannot guarantee that their milk, or the products made from their milk, are free of harmful germs.
- Germs such as Escherichia coli O157, Campylobacter, and Salmonella can contaminate milk during the process of milking dairy animals, including cows and goats. Animals that carry these germs are usually healthy.
How does milk get contaminated?
Milk contamination may occur from:
- Cow feces coming into direct contact with the milk
- Infection of the cow’s udder (mastitis)
- Cow diseases (e.g., bovine tuberculosis)
- Bacteria that live on the skin of cows
- Environment (e.g., feces, dirt, processing equipment)
- Insects, rodents, and other animal vectors
- Humans, for example, by cross-contamination from soiled clothing and boots
Pasteurization is the only way to kill many of the bacteria in milk that can make people very sick.
Information about raw milk-related outbreaks
States that allow the legal sale of raw milk for human consumption have more raw milk-related outbreaks of illness than states that do not allow raw milk to be sold legally.
Among dairy product-associated outbreaks reported to CDC between 1973 and 2008 in which the investigators reported whether the product was pasteurized or raw, 82% were due to raw milk or cheese. From 1998 through 2008, 86 outbreaks due to consumption of raw milk or raw milk products were reported to CDC. These resulted in 1,676 illnesses, 191 hospitalizations, and 2 deaths. Most of these illnesses were caused by Escherichia coli O157, Campylobacter, or Salmonella. It is important to note that a substantial proportion of the raw milk-associated disease burden falls on children; among the 86 raw dairy product outbreaks from 1998 to 2008, 79% involved at least one person less than 20 years old.
Reported outbreaks represent the tip of the iceberg. For every outbreak and every illness reported, many others occur, and most illnesses are not part of recognized outbreaks.
Money and Food Safety
The new food safety law – long in the making and long overdue – represents a major step forward in the federal government’s ability to reduce the number of illnesses and deaths associated with foodborne illness. Among other things, the law grants the FDA authority to order recalls, conduct more frequent inspections and require food producers to have written plans that identify and protect against modes of contamination.
What the new law does not guarantee, however, is funding to implement these important safety requirements. And without proper funding, the food safety mandates in the new law may become empty promises.
In a recent Smart Money article by Sarah Morgan, David Plunkett, a senior staff attorney in the food safety department of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, was quoted as saying the FDA’s “budget right now is not adequate, and it’s certainly not adequate to implement this law.”
Before a bill is passed into law, the United Sates Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is required, with some exceptions, to conduct a cost estimate of implementing it. The CBO report on the Food Safety and Modernization Act concludes that after deducting fees earned pursuant to the new law, the net cost will be approximately $1.1 billion over five years beginning in 2011. According to the CBO report:
CBO estimates the fees collected would not offset all of the costs of the new requirements in S. 510. The additional inspections and administrative activities not covered by fees would increase discretionary outlays by $1.1 billion over five years beginning in 2011. That amount incorporates savings to the FDA for food safety activities conducted under current law that would henceforth be funded by fees in the bill. The spending total also reflects the cost of authorized grants to states and certain other entities to enhance food safety.
A significant cost? Sure it is, but not compared to the cost of medical care, lost wages, pain, suffering and death associated with the thousands of cases of foodborne illness that occur each year in the United States.
And that’s the problem with the short-sighted Tea Party-Republican mentality that has infected Congress like a case of diarrhea-inducing salmonellosis. To improve health and safety, to create new jobs and to decrease the cost of human misery, you have to spend money. Far from being a net loss, this added expense actually saves money and lives. Let’s hope our representatives realize that.
Criminal Prosecution in Food Contamination Cases Practically Nil
I had the opportunity to discuss the lack of criminal prosecutions in food contamination cases on Minnesota Public Radio. Below is the MPR audio of the program, which focuses on the case of dairy farmer Michael Hartmann, whose raw milk and other dairy products were linked to outbreaks of E. coli and Campylobacter in Minnesota in 2010.
Below is an excerpt from the radio program:
“The level of prosecution in food-borne illness cases is practically nil,” said Fred Pritzker, a Minneapolis attorney who specializes in seeking damages for food contamination victims.
“In all the years that I’ve been doing this I have yet to see a manufacturer, producer, actually prosecuted and convicted for any outbreaks,” he said.
The most recent example is the salmonella-contaminated food products sold two years ago by the Peanut Corporation of America, Pritzker said. Nine deaths and hundreds of illnesses are attributed to its tainted peanut butter and other items.
Pritzker represented the families of three Minnesota residents killed in the outbreak. He said even though emails show company officials knew the peanut butter could be contaminated, a two-year federal criminal probe has failed to indict anyone.
“If that case doesn’t get prosecuted then really I think it’s sending the signal that they’re not going to do much of anything unless somebody basically says ‘I want to harm someone’,” he said.
Pritzker said prosecutors are reluctant to tackle cases unless they can win big sentences. In some cases food law only provides misdemeanor penalties.
A proposed law in Congress would change that. Co-sponsored by Minnesota Senators Klobuchar and Franken, it would impose felony sentences on anyone who knowingly contaminates the food supply.
Raw Milk is Not Worth the Risk
I don’t get it.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, some people believe that drinking raw milk or eating cheese made from raw milk is healthful and safe. It isn’t. And anyone who believes it is, ignores an unassailable body of scientific knowledge and common sense.
No one in their right mind eats raw hamburger. That’s because it hasn’t been heated to a sufficient temperature to kill off harmful pathogens. The same is true for raw dairy products. If it isn’t pasteurized, the microscopic pieces of cow shit and other unhealthy things residing on, in or around cows aren’t neutralized and will cause illness. That’s exactly why laws requiring pasteurization of milk were enacted in the first place. Without them, raw milk and raw cheese outbreaks of tuberculosis, E. coli O157:H7 poisoning, salmonellosis, Campylobacteriosis and other nasty, dangerous and fatal diseases would be rampant.
How do I know? Because I represent people injured or killed by raw milk and cheese made from raw milk, including many folks who are part of the Costco-Bravo Farms E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that occurred within the past few months in various western states. My clients include several children and elderly people including one older woman who remains bedridden in a rehabilitation facility months after she was first sickened. I am also currently representing a Pennsylvania man sickened by raw milk purchased from a high-end natural foods store. He, too, remains incapacitated.
A January 29, 2011 article in the Los Angeles Times, reports that U.S. marshals and Food and Drug Administration agents seized adulterated cheese produced by Bravo Foods. This cheese was apparently part of the production implicated in the recent outbreak. Federal officials wanted to make sure this cheese was fully and finally removed from the marketplace.
Bravo Farms is a small “artisanal” California cheese producer of the type glorified by foodies and “locavores” who tend to believe that smaller “craft” (not to be confused with Kraft cheese) makers produce healthier and safer food. While no friend of “mega” producers (who also poison the marketplace with great regularity), I can assure you that size alone never guarantees safer food.
I am asked to speak to groups large and small throughout the United States about food safety. These tend to be open, free-wheeling conversations in which both I and the audience have an opportunity to exchange thoughts and beliefs about food safety. It is clear to me that many bright, well intentioned people believe that organic, locally-produced food products are uniformly and consistently safer than national brands. I wish that were true. What makes food safer, whether produced down the road or across the country, is rigid adherence to science-based food production techniques. That means, when it comes to milk and dairy products, use of pasteurization. I know to some that isn’t “natural,” but neither is spending the rest of your life in a rehabilitation facility or nursing home.
Pritzker to Speak at Northeastern University School of Law on Foodborne Illness Litigation
Food safety attorney Fred Pritzker is speaking at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts, at the school’s winter symposium: “From Seed to Stomach: Food and Agricultural Law.” The symposium will take place on Friday, January 21st, 2011. To register as an attendee, visit the school’s website at http://www.nulj.org/index.html.
Mr. Pritzker will be part of a food safety panel discussing foodborne illness litigation. He will be joined on the panel by Jason Sapsin, former Associate Chief Counsel at U.S. Food and Drug Administration and now an attorney with Polsinelli Shughart PC, and Shawn Stevens, Food Safety Defense Attorney at Gass Weber Mullins LLC.
Pritzker Calls for Action on New E. coli Research
This is a call to action for the New Year and beyond.
It’s made on behalf of the tens of thousands of people who have already suffered E. coli O157:H7 poisoning and the millions more who will be afflicted by it in the future. It is made because new research convincingly demonstrates that even people with so-called “mild” cases of E. coli O157:H7 – those thought to have made a full recovery – have a dramatically increased lifetime risk of hypertension, kidney impairment and cardiovascular disease. This ground-breaking research shows that E. coli O157:H7 patients require extensive annual medical evaluations and testing to “to prevent or reduce silent progressive vascular injury.”
In response to this research, we are calling for the following:
- We are calling on the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to immediately post this research on its websites and convene an appropriate panel to evaluate these data and implement guidance in light of them.
- We are also calling on food companies responsible for E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks — including past outbreaks — to responsibly notify their customers about these newly identified risks and treatment needs. As the entities that should have prevented these illnesses from occurring in the first place, it is only appropriate that they fully pay for the needed medical care.
The findings of Dr. Clark and his co-authors are contained in the British Medical Journal article published on November 17, 2010 entitled Long term risk for hypertension, renal impairment, and cardiovascular disease after gastroenteritis from drinking water contaminated with Escherichia coli O157:H7: a prospective cohort study. The complete article is available free at http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6020.full.pdf.
In summary, people who suffer E. coli O157:H7 poisoning but do not go on to develop the rarer and much more serious complication, hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), nevertheless have a 33% greater risk of hypertension and a more than two-fold increase in cardiovascular events as reported as congestive heart failure, heart attack or stroke. They also face more than a three-fold increase in the occurrence of both structural and functional kidney impairment, compared to a non-exposed comparison population.
The study authors recommend that any individual who has suffered gastroenteritis as a result of E..coli O157:H7 exposure should have an annual assessment by a physician and a blood pressure measurement coupled with a urinanalysis, serum creatinine value and micro albumin :creatinine ratio to determine if they have hypertension and/or if they have structural or functional kidney impairment. Certainly any cardiovascular complaints would also be recorded with appropriate risk factor investigation with subsequent modification by exercise, diet and medications. Individuals who had definite E. coli O157 H:7 gastroenteritis, in view of their potential cardiovascular risks, would likely warrant low dose ASA prophylaxis if there are no other contraindications. Those detected with hypertension will require specific anti-hypertensive treatment including a low salt diet, medications and a BP monitor for home recording and long term follow-up to make sure their blood pressure reaches their target (if they have evidence of renal impairment the target is 130/70 and without renal impairment the target would be 130/80).
If any patients have micro albuminuria or proteinuria not previously detected, then the use of an ACE Inhibitor, an ARB or an anti-renin to reduce their protein excretion rate (if it exceeds 0.5Gm on 24hour quantification) with follow-up by annual 24 hour urine protein or a microalbumin: creatinine ratio. Identifying individuals with high blood pressure can prevent many of the future vascular complications and if they already have structural and or functional kidney impairment consideration should be given to initiating an ACE Inhibitor, angiotensin receptor blocker or anti-renin agent to reduce the proteinuria as well as to control their blood pressure.
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Fred Pritzker On Newsmakers
