Eating Snow May Have Caused Belgium E. coli Cluster
Health officials in southeastern Wisconsin said a cluster of gastrointestinal illnesses, including three cases of E. coli O157:H7 in children from the Villiage of Belgium, could have been caused by eating snow or ice.
A press release from the Ozaukee County Health Department says the following:
“Interviews conducted with family members for all 3 cases were unable to identify a common food item or other definite source of infection. The source has not been absolutely determined but a possible explanation includes close contact or a common environmental source, such as contaminated snow or ice. In addition the children had close personal contact with each other which could lead to transmission between the children.”
But County Health Officer Glenda Madlom said the investigation is continuing with help from the Wisconsin state health department.
The investigation has identified two laboratory-confirmed cases of E coli O157:H7 infection in siblings. One had onset in December and one had onset in January. A third case was identified in a neighbor who had onset in December and tested negative for E. coli infection, but is considered a probable case based on clinical symptoms.
Two of the 3 patients were hospitalized, and one remains hospitalized. At least one of the children developed life-threatening hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), the leading cause of kidney failure in children and the leading cause of E. coli deaths.
The Ozaukee Health Department is also investigating a case of laboratory-confirmed cryptosporidiosis in a child from the same neighborhood. Madlom’s office said there is no evidence at this time that this infection is related to the three E. coli cases, however the investigation is ongoing. Both cryptosporidium and E. coli are found on farms and in animal manure and the Village of Belgium is in an agricultural area.
In its press release, the county stressed careful attention to hand-washing and hygiene as a means of preventing infection. “Hand-hygiene is particularly important after exposure to farms, farm animals, animal manure, geese and deer droppings which often contain pathogenic organisms including E. coli O157:H7 and cryptosporidium.”
The town’s water supply has been tested and health officials are satisfied it is not contaminated.
Wisconsin Raw Milk E coli Problem Under Review
A Wisconsin state government committee will start meeting next month to clarify a public policy response to the question of raw, unpasteurized milk. Scientists have proven over and over again it is at risk to be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 and other pathogens, but die-hard pockets of raw milk advocates won’t let go.
Secretary Rod Nilsestuen of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, says the group will consider the legal and regulatory affects and what conditions would be required to protect public health.
W isconsin law has required since 1957 that milk sold to consumers be pasteurized, but raw milk believers have gotten around the legislation through cow-sharing agreements and other arrangements.
In the past year, there has been more than one Wisconsin raw milk outbreak, including a raw milk Campylobacter outbreak caused by a family farm near Elkhorn in the southeastern part of the state. At least 35 people were sickened, including many children.
The raw milk study group’s chair will be Richard Barrows, a retired Associate Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The group also includes dairy farmers, cheese makers, consumers and food safety professionals.The Legislature will be advised of the committee’s recommendation.
A classic case of raw milk food poisoning that created a lot of awareness about the danger of raw milk involved E. coli O157:H7 and a cow share program in Woodland, Washington. A study of the 2005 raw milk E. coli outbreak said the scientific discovery of the outbreak’s source helped initiate legislative reform in the Washington Legislature regarding cow-share programs.
According to a recap of the outbreak by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the outbreak started in December 2005 with an unusually high number of E. coli O157:H7 cases in Clark County.
Eventually, 18 cases were discovered, at least nine of whom were children. Of those nine, five were hospitalized and four developed E. coli HUS, or hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), the leading cause of E. coli death.
U.S. Senate Poised to Take up Food Safety Reform.
By Fred Pritzker
Escherichia coli O157:H7 is an enteric pathogen that can cause life threatening hemorrhagic colitis and, in very severe cases, hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS.
In the United States every year, an estimated 70,000 to 73,000 people are infected by the bacteria, which produces a toxin that attacks red blood cells and can often lead to E. coli renal failure.
E. coli O157:H7 and HUS E. coli kills on average 61 Americans a year, but there is no known cure for the disease and it is still considered the most lethal of foodborne illness types. It usually is most devastating to small children and the elderly, but it is destructive enough to claim the lives of health adults.
Right now there is a 4-year-old child in South Carolina who is in a partially paralyzed state from suffering a stroke. That child, according to the Washington Post, is one of the 80 people in 31 states to have been sickened in the Nestle cookie dough E. coli O157:H7 outbreak of 2009.
The cookie dough outbreak is fresh on the minds of Congress, which is poised this fall when the session reconvenes to make historic changes in the way we protect our food. The Senate will take up food safety reform and hopefully pass a bill that makes a difference for consumers who are weary of large, multi-state outbreaks of Salmonella in peanut butter, E. coli O157:H7 in leafy greens and Salmonella in pistachios.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, gave an indication of the mood in Washington this week when he spoke at Drake University in his home state.
“We can’t put it off,”Harkin said. “It is past time to modernize U.S. food safety laws and regulations.”
Earlier this year, the House passed a sweeping new food safety bill that would expand the oversight and enforcement power of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The House bill, steered by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, also has a mechanism to fund more inspections by taxing food producers once a year. Once the Senate passes its own version of a food safety law, the two chambers will hash out their differences in conference committee. The hope is to lay new legislation by the end of this year on the desk of President Obama — who has made food safety an early priority of his administration.
As part of the hearings that led up to the House bill, a client of national food safety law firm Pritzker Olsen attorneys testified in Washington about the death of his mother. Jeffrey Almer told a packed hearing room that peanut butter contaminated with Salmonella Typhimurium .accomplished something that two bouts of cancer couldn’t : it killed his mother, Shirley Mae Almer, who was a vibrant businesswoman and loving, active grandmother who lived in northern Minnesota.
The Almer family and too many other families like them will be watching what the Senate creates and what compromises are struck to pass new legislation that can bring meaningful change.
