E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders sparks lawsuits and onion recall across US

A month ago, Clarissa DeBock fell ill with abdominal cramps, diarrhoea and nausea — but it wasn’t the usual stomach bug.

She had gone to lunch five days earlier with her fiancé at their local McDonald’s in North Platte, Nebraska. The Quarter Pounder she ate that day looked and tasted normal, she said.

But gastrointestinal symptoms landed DeBock in the emergency room on Sept. 25, and she tested positive for a strain of E. coli called O157:H7 — the one connected to the outbreak the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday.

“I could just tell that something was off by 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 across 10 states from September 27 to October 11. Ten people were hospitalised, and one died.

DeBock, 33, a receptionist at a surgical centre, attributes her illness to the McDonald’s meal.

“It’s just scary, I guess, just because you trust them as a fast-food place,” she said. “You’re putting your trust in 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 connected to the outbreak — a Colorado man sued on Wednesday.

A McDonald’s spokesperson said Wednesday that slivered onions served on the Quarter Pounders were likely to have been responsible for the outbreak. On Thursday, the company said one of its suppliers, Taylor Farms, had provided slivered onions to locations associated with the outbreak. Taylor Farms has initiated 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’s representing 15 people in total — men and women ages 20 to 60 — who attribute their illnesses to the outbreak, though he hasn’t yet filed lawsuits on behalf of the others. One client, he said, developed sepsis and was in the hospital for over a week.

“When you go to a restaurant, you are trusting that the restaurant did everything they could do to make you safe, but in this case, McDonald’s breached that trust,” Simon said. “I suspect it’s going to take a long time before they get it back.”

If raw onions are, indeed, the culprit behind the E. coli outbreak, it would be the first time they are known to have been contaminated with this particular strain. Past outbreaks have been linked to leafy greens, sprouts, beef and cheese made from unpasteurised milk.

McDonald’s has paused the distribution of slivered onions in the 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 the company intended to regain people’s confidence, adding that it was 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’ve taken the 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 happen on-site. If the onions contained E. coli, he said, the contamination could have been identified by adequate testing on the journey from the farm to restaurants.

“McDonald’s can say that 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 mostly recovered and is grateful that her son, Kai, didn’t get sick, as well. He is nearly two years old, and DeBock said she usually shares her food with him but didn’t in this case. Young children and older adults are particularly vulnerable to severe symptoms from E. coli.

“It’s pretty terrifying to think about,” she said. “I was pretty miserable, so I don’t know how his little body would have handled it.”

DeBock said she has been nervous to order food from any restaurants since her illness, especially with her son.

“I don’t know that I trust to eat out for a little while,” she said.