A deadly E. coli outbreak associated with Romaine salad, which was torn through 15 states at the end of last year, but Food and Drug Administration did not publicly reveal, according to a report.
The outbreak was linked to a person’s death and admitted 36 people in November, including a 9-year-old boy who almost died of kidney failure.
An internal report obtained by NBC News revealed that the agency did not named the products involved in the outbreak and that they did not share information with the public about it.
“There was no public communication related to this outbreak,” the report said, adding that the company in question “was not named during this outbreak because there was no product left in trading.”
Data connected 89 cases in 15 states and concluded that the Romaine salad was the source of the outbreak, the Food and Drug Administration report concluded.
Questions are now being asked why the agency decided to keep the outbreak quiet – and critics have pointed out that many employees responsible for distributing information to the public about food -borne illnesses recently lost their jobs in the Trump administration’s cleansing of the federal government.
“We no longer have all the mechanisms in place to learn from these situations and prevent the next outbreak from happening,” Taryn Webb, who led the agency’s public engagement department for human food until she lost her job in the celebrating cuts this month, to NBC News.
“It is disappointing, but with 20,000 employees of health and human services fired, investigation and reporting on outbreaks and warning the public whether the cause is clearly not a priority for this administration,” said food security lawyer William Marler.
“If the cleaned CDC and the FDA can no longer do the job, we will step up to inform and protect the public – so much for” Make America Healthy Again, “he added.
Officials are not obliged to publish information on all known outbreaks of food -borne illnesses, and in some cases the agency may decide to hold back publishing information when the reason is still unknown.
“The FDA names companies when there is enough proof that connects an outbreak to a company and there are action advice to consumers as long as naming the company is not legally prohibited,” a spokesman told NBC News in a statement. “When the investigators had confirmed the probable source, the outbreak had already been completed and there were no actions, there were no action advice to consumers.”
The independent Has contacted Food and Drug Administration for further comment.
But advocates of food security claim that the agency’s response is not good enough. “It is disturbing that the FDA has not said anything more public or identified the name of a breeder or processor,” Frank Yiannas, the agency’s Deputy Commissioner of Food Policy and Responses from 2018 to 2023, told the business. He added that the agency has been changed towards greater transparency in recent years when it comes to revealing information about major outbreaks.
“People have the right to know who sells contaminated products,” added Sandra Eskin, a former official of the US agricultural department.
Cases began to emerge over Missouri and Indiana in November. The tribe was identified as a particularly dangerous – E. Coli 0157: H7. The rare stem can result in organ damage and even death in some extraordinary cases.
High School students who live in Missouris St. Louis County, was affected after eating salad at a school event. Families reported that their children suffered from violent abdominal cramps, bloody diarrhea and vomiting.
In Indiana, the same strain killed almost 9-year-old Colton George, who woke up doubled in pain. He was hospitalized for two weeks, including on his 10th year’s birthday after developing Hemoltyian uremical syndrome. He was put on dialysis around the clock. George is still suffering from chronic abdominal pain and fatigue, his family told NBC News.
E. coli outbreaks in both states are associated with the same genetic sequencing, according to a trial filed by the George family.
Outbreaks also occurred in Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wisconsin, says Food and Drug Administration’s report.
Food Safety Attorney General Marler Clark has brought a case against Taylor Farms, one of the largest producers of salads and fresh vegetables in the United States, and claims that this is where the tainted salad originated.
Taylor Farms refused the claim in a statement to NBC News. “We don’t think Taylor Farms was the source of the referenced recent E. Coli outbreaks, based on information collected under thorough third-party surveys and robust food security control,” the company said in a statement.
The independent Has reached out to Taylor Farms for further comment.
Nine other litigation claims in court papers that Taylor Farms sold “deficient and unreasonably dangerous” products, NBC News reports.