A month ago, Clarissa DeBock fell ill with abdominal cramps, diarrhea and nausea — but it wasn’t your usual stomach flu.
She had gone to lunch with her fiancé at their local McDonald’s in North Platte, Nebraska, five days earlier. The Quarter Pounder she ate that day looked and tasted normal, she said.
But gastrointestinal symptoms sent DeBock to the emergency room on Sept. 25, and she tested positive for a strain of E. coli called O157:H7 — the strain linked to the outbreak the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday.
“I could just tell something was wrong because of the cramps, just because they were so bad,” she said. “You get cramps with the flu and stuff, but it was different.”
The CDC’s investigation into the E. coli outbreak linked to Quarter Pounders has so far identified 49 cases in 10 states from Sept. 27 to Oct. 11. Ten people were hospitalized and one died.
DeBock, 33, a receptionist at a surgical center, attributed her illness to the McDonald’s meal.
“It’s just scary, I guess, just because you trust them as a fast-food restaurant,” she said. “You trust them to provide safe food.”
DeBock sued McDonald’s on Thursday, seeking compensation for lost wages, medical bills and physical and emotional suffering.
It’s the second lawsuit tied to the outbreak; a Colorado man filed suit Wednesday.
A McDonald’s spokesman said Wednesday that the onion chips served on its Quarter Pounders were likely responsible for the outbreak. The company said Thursday that one of its suppliers, Taylor Farms, had provided onion chips to locations linked to the outbreak. Taylor Farms has issued a recall of four raw onion products.
The plaintiffs in the two lawsuits are both represented by Ron Simon, managing partner of Ron Simon & Associates, a food safety law firm. Simon said he represents a total of 15 people — men and women ages 20 to 60 — who attribute their illnesses to the outbreak, though he has not yet filed lawsuits on behalf of the others. One client, he said, developed sepsis and was hospitalized for more than a week.
“When you go to a restaurant, you trust that the restaurant has done everything they can to keep you safe, and in this case McDonald’s has broken that trust,” Simon said. “I suspect it’s going to take a long time for them to get it back.”
If raw onions are indeed the culprit behind theemergency room, it would be the first time they’ve been known to be contaminated with this particular strain. Previous outbreaks have been linked to leafy greens, Brussels sprouts, beef and cheese made from unpasteurized milk.
McDonald’s has halted the distribution of sliced onions in affected areas and temporarily removed the Quarter Pounder from affected restaurants. Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, told NBC’s “TODAY” show on Wednesday that the company plans to rebuild people’s trust, adding that it’s still safe to eat at McDonald’s restaurants.
“Food safety is our top priority at McDonald’s,” he said. “What’s important today is that we took action to protect the American public and promote public health.”
Darin Detwiler, a professor of food regulatory policy at Northeastern University, said restaurants and fast-food chains are responsible for what they serve to customers, even if the contamination didn’t occur on-site. If the onions contained E. coli, he said, the contamination could have been detected by proper testing on the journey from the farm to the restaurants.
“McDonald’s can say this problem was completely isolated to the onions, completely isolated to this farm, this distributor, but they can never say they have zero responsibility because they should have tested it before it got to the franchise,” Detwiler said. “It’s their name on the product. It goes through their kitchen.”
DeBock has largely recovered and is thankful that her son, Kai, also didn’t get sick. He’s almost 2 years old, and DeBock said she normally shares her food with him, but not in this case. Young children and older adults are particularly vulnerable to severe symptoms from E. coli.
“It’s pretty scary to think about it,” she said. “I was pretty miserable, so I don’t know how his little body would have handled it.”
DeBock said she’s been nervous about ordering food from restaurants since her illness, especially with her son.
“I don’t know if I’ll trust going out to eat for a while,” she said.