A high school class in Minnesota that harvested seven deer and made kabobs from the venison learned a hard lesson about foodborne illness when 29 of 225 classmates were sickened by toxic E. coli O103:H2.
The outbreak occurred in November 2010 after six of the deer were shot by students and one was collected from the site of a road accident. The students butchered the animals, frozen the meat and later marinated the venison in five-gallon buckets for grilling and tasting.
Joshua Rounds of the Minnesota Department of Health led a study of the outbreak and the results were published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“This outbreak indicates that white-tailed deer are a source of human non-O157 STEC infections,” the study authors wrote. “Venison should be handled and cooked with the same caution recommended for other meats.”
Among other things, the study found multiple potential routes of transmission from venison to case-patients, including consumption of undercooked venison and cross-contamination from raw to cooked venison. There were instances of using the same plate for raw and cooked venison, using the same tongs to handle raw and cooked venison, and not washing hands after bare-hand contact with raw venison. The study identified these as mistakes that contributed to the outbreak.
No case-patients showed development of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and none died. The name of the school was not mentioned in the summary of the study published by the CDC.
