A premier Minnesota restaurant, Butcher & The Boar, is the only restaurant in the state named by Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese Company as a recipient of soft cheese associated with a deadly outbreak of listeriosis. Whole Foods Markets, Lunds, Byerlys, Rainbow, Kowalski’s and other grocery retailers also sold the cheese, as did restaurants in Wisconsin and Illinois. The recalled gourmet cheese has been associated with a Listeria death in Minnesota, a second Minnesota illness and individual cases of listeriosis in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. All five people were hospitalized and one infection in a pregnant woman resulted in miscarriage.
Laboratory tests conducted by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture on samples of Les Frères and Petit Frère with Truffles cheeses made by Crave Brothers from two retail stores indicate the presence of the outbreak strain of Listeria monocytogenes. More test results are pending and the number of illnesses connected to this outbreak could very well grow because it can take up to 70 days after consumption of Listeria-tainted food for a person to develop symptoms, said Listeria lawyer Fred Pritzker, whose Bad Bug Law Team has opened its own investigation into the outbreak in Minnesota and other states.
Pritzker has recovered millions of dollars for victims of foodborne Listeria outbreaks and currently represents a man who suffered severe injuries as a result of eating cheese adulterated with Listeria monocytogenes. The lawsuit alleges that an Italian cheese maker produced and sold cheese that was contaminated with the deadly pathogen. The Italian cheese Listeria litigation points to unsafe food handling as a factor in the outbreak. Pritzker said his firm has successfully sued restaurants during past food poisoning outbreaks if the case patient ate there and got sick.
In the current Listeria outbreak, no information has been released to say whether any of the victims ate contaminated Crave Brothers cheese while dining at Butcher & The Boar — only that it was an outlet for the product. Butcher & the Boar is an upscale restaurant located in downtown Minneapolis and was chosen Restaurant of the Year in 2012 by the Star Tribune newspaper.
