Six Missourians are suing a California-based vegetable producer after they or their underage family members became sick from E. Coli poisoning last year.
The outbreak made headlines last November when dozens of people contracted food poisoning after eating at several St. Louis-area catered events, including banquets for Rockwood Summit High School.
The St. Louis County Department of Health eventually tallied 115 people sickened as part of the E. Coli outbreak.
Missouri health officials used genome sequencing to link the outbreak to those in other states, indicating an issue with a national grower or supplier.
Bill Marler, a Seattle-area attorney who represents the sickened residents and their families, is now adding Salinas-based Taylor Farms as a defendant in the case. The suits allege the residents got sick after eating lettuce from the producer.
"The only romaine lettuce my clients ate came from Taylor Farms," he said. "You know, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's not a zebra."
The lawyer, who specializes in food poisoning cases, adds he plans to drop St. Louis-based Andre's Catering from the lawsuits.
Taylor Farms was also tied to a national E. Coli outbreak last year linked to onions on McDonald's hamburgers.
Marler amended five suits filed by plaintiffs in St. Louis County Circuit Court to include Taylor Farms. He's also representing a Missouri woman who has filed suit against the producer in federal court.
The lawyer said he linked the contamination to romaine lettuce from Taylor Farms through interviews with patients, public records requests to health departments and by researching produce sales.
Taylor Farms denies the allegations. Representatives said the company rigorously vets its products using sampling and pathogen testing and didn't find E. Coli.
"Taylor Farms product WAS NOT the source of the referenced 2024 E. Coli outbreak," company representatives wrote in a statement. "We perform extensive raw and finished product testing on all our product and there was no evidence of contamination. Any reporting that connects Taylor Farms products to these heartbreaking illnesses is dangerous, irresponsible and unfair to the impacted families."
The company is considering all legal avenues to defend itself, representatives added.
Marler criticized the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for not informing the public about the outbreak.
"The public, in my view, has a right to know of the risk about leafy greens, [and] romaine lettuce, specifically romaine lettuce from Taylor Farms, who's been involved in multiple foodborne illness outbreaks over the years," he said.
Usually a large-scale national outbreak merits a public report from federal officials, he said.
"The whole idea behind it is to figure out how the outbreak happened," Marler said. "So, people can learn how to try to prevent it the next time. That's the whole point of making these outbreaks public…but they didn't do it."
A spokesperson for the FDA stated in an email that the agency did not publicize more information about the outbreak because, by the time they learned of the likely source, there was nothing that consumers could do.
"The FDA names firms when there is enough evidence linking an outbreak to a firm and there is actionable advice for consumers, as long as naming the firm is not legally prohibited," the spokesperson said. "For the 2024 E. coli outbreak, by the time investigators had confirmed the likely source, the outbreak had already ended, and there was no actionable advice for consumers."
The spokesperson also did not confirm that Taylor Farms was the source of the 2024 outbreak, citing the Trade Secrets Act.
"When a specific source of contamination is determined, the result is usually a recall and public announcement by the firm and/or a warning about that product by the FDA," the FDA representative said.
Updated with comments from an FDA spokesperson.
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