Rhode Island E coli Lawsuit Is 2nd from Outbreak
The family of an 11-year-old girl from Lincoln, Rhode Island, has filed a ground beef E. coli lawsuit against the company that supplied fresh hamburger meat to the Camp Bournedale nature camp in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
According to the suit filed late last week in Plymouth Superior Court, Rhode Island Lincoln Middle School student Lynne Santos was one of more than 30 students and chaperones who were sickened after eating a meal of hamburgers during their school trip to Bournedale. The Santos child fell severely ill and was hospitalized for four days, according to the suit.
It is the second Lincoln Middle School E. coli lawsuit filed against the ground beef maker, South Shore Meats of Brockton, Massachusetts. As part of the public health investigation into the outbreak, investigators tested leftover hamburger meat from Camp Bournedale and found it contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. South Shore Meats and the USDA’s Food Safety an Inspection Service announced a recall of more than 1,000 pounds of the ground beef, which was mostly sold to commercial kitchens in New England.
The owner of Camp Bournedale has said since the outbreak that camp cooks will never again prepare hamburgers for visitors from fresh ground beef, which is a common vehicle of transmission for E. coli O157:H7. Nationwide, there have been 18 ground beef E. coli outbreaks since 2007, all resulting in lawsuits. The most recent came just after the Camp Bournedale illnesses. The multi-state Fairbank Farms E. coli outbreak has sickened at least 25 people in 10 states, killing two and causing at least three cases of E. coli HUS, or hemolytic uremic syndrome, a life-threatening complication of E. coli infection.
Tags: ecoli lawsuit, ground beef e coli
