Public health officials in Illinois and Kentucky are investigating separate outbreaks of Salmonella associated with independent Mexican restaurants. Combined, the Hacienda Don Villo outbreak in Channahon, Illinois, and the Casa Mexicana outbreak in Madisonville, Kentucky, have sickened about 50 people. In Kentucky, one of the outbreak patients has died.
“Every outbreak of Salmonella carries the prospect of life-long illness for unsuspecting families,’’ said Fred Pritzker, founder of national food safety law firm Pritzker Olsen Attorneys. Pritzker said too many people downplay the burdens of Salmonella infection, which can trigger an assortment of long-term illness in some patients. In others, Salmonellosis resolves itself with no medical attention and the illness is over.
Studies have shown that Salmonella can trigger reactive arthritis, or Reiter’s Syndrome, in certain individuals, greatly affecting their ability to work and enjoy life. Besides arthritis concerns, Salmonella also is associated over the long term with inflammation of the heart muscle, pancreatitis, blood infection, colitis and inflammation of the aorta. And more than one third of all reported cases of Salmonellosis occur in children under the age of 10.
“We need to understand the true burden of Salmonella in our food,’’ Pritzker said. “If we don’t raise awareness, we’ll never get the interventions we need to stop food poisoning.’’
According to reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Salmonellosis is a major foodborne illness that results in 1.4 million infections, 15,000 hospitalizations, and 400 deaths each year in the United States. Salmonella is the most common bacterial cause of foodborne outbreaks in the U.S. and about half of all Salmonella outbreaks occur in restaurant settings. The CDC calls Salmonella a “sneaky germ” because it sneaks its way into many foods.
The Pritzker law firm is conducting its own investigations of the current Mexican restaurant outbreaks in Kentucky and Illinois. So far, the firm has been retained by a case patient in the Hacienda Don Villo outbreak and is continuing to accept other cases from both outbreaks. Efforts are being made to trace each outbreak to its origin of contamination, but Salmonella restaurant lawsuits do not require the food source to be pinpointed. In the Hacienda Don Villo outbreak, as in many cases of restaurant food poisoning, there is a chance the bacteria may have been transmitted to food by a sick employee.
