FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

News

Salmonella-Tainted Cucumbers Kill Three People, Sicken Hundreds

Salmonella-tainted cucumbers have sickened 558 people, killing three of them in 33 states. The company that distributed the produce was also linked to a hepatitis outbreak in 1997.
Imagen vía Wikimedia Commons

This story is part of a partnership between MedPage Today and VICE News.

Three people have died and hundreds have fallen ill after eating tainted cucumbers imported from Mexico. They were supplied by a distributor whose former president spent time behind bars nearly two decades ago following a hepatitis-tainted strawberry outbreak.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has counted 558 cases of salmonella poona infections linked to the cucumbers in 33 states, with 140 new cases reported to the CDC between September 15 and September 22.

Advertisement

"I expect that the numbers will rise as more health departments weigh in," said Bill Marler, the managing partner of Marler Clark, a law firm that specializes in foodborne illnesses. "We have been retained by two dozen people from California, Arizona, Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Several of the clients have been hospitalized. One was in ICU for nearly a week."

Salmonella is a bacterial infection whose symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal cramping that can last between four days and a week, according to the CDC. In some cases the bacteria can spread to the rest of the blood stream, prompting hospitalization. In rare cases, it can result in death.

Related: Peanut Company Executive Gets 28 Years in Prison for Food Poisoning Outbreak

One of Marler's clients, a 46-year-old Arizona woman named Elisabeth Barber, was turned away from urgent care and told to go straight to the emergency room, according to a lawsuit filed on her behalf on September 20. She experienced a 102-degree fever, night sweats, chills, and headaches. Although she was prescribed antibiotics, the gastrointestinal symptoms lasted nearly four weeks.

Marler also filed a complaint in Utah, where he is representing the parents of a 5-year-old boy who fell ill after eating cucumbers. The boy's illness started with diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach pain, but the salmonella poona made its way to his urinary tract, causing painful urination and blood clots to pass when the young child tried to urinate.

Advertisement

Investigators traced the outbreak to the San Diego-based distributor Andrew & Williamson Sales Co., which imported the cucumbers from Rancho Don Juanito de R.L. de C.V. in Baja, Mexico, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The company recalled all "Limited Edition"-branded cucumbers on September 4.

Andrew & Williamson, or A&W, is the same distributor that supplied hepatitis-tainted frozen strawberries to schools in 1997, sickening 198 students and teachers in three states and prompting a federal probe. A&W ultimately admitted to taking part in the fraudulent sale of nearly two million pounds of frozen Mexican-grown strawberries to the US Department of Agriculture's school lunch program and hiding the fact that they weren't grown domestically. The company agreed to pay the government $1.3 million as part of a 1997 civil settlement, and A&W's president at the time, Frederick WIlliamson, was sentenced to five months in prison.

"This event happened almost 20 years ago," A&W partner David Murray told VICE News. "A&W is a different company than it was in the 1990s, and we learned a great deal from that experience. Today, food safety is part of what we do everyday. We live food safety 24/7. It's ingrained in our culture."

He added that its facility is open to customers anytime to see food safety practices for themselves.

Related: It's Not Allowed in Baby Bottles, But BPA Is Probably Lining Your Canned Foods

A&W announced last week that it would make a donation to the nonprofit group STOP Foodborne Illness to help fund an educational packet to improve diagnosis at pediatric emergency rooms and hospitals.

"On behalf of every employee at our company, we want consumers to understand that we are absolutely devastated by the three deaths and illnesses that have been reported in the media," Murray said in a statement accompanying the donation announcement. "We want you to know that we are continuing our collaborative work with federal and state agencies in the US and Mexico, and have engaged leading food safety experts to analyze our processes and add to our existing expertise. When we find the problem, we will fix it and take every step possible to keep it from happening again."

Follow Sydner Lupkin on Twitter: @slupkin Photo via Wikimedia Commons