Hartmann Raw Milk E. Coli Outbreak Expands to 8 Victims in Minnesota
Three More Children Sickened by Hartmann’s Raw Milk
Three more children, one of them an infant, have been sickened by E. coli O157:H7 linked to raw milk from Hartmann Dairy Farms in Gibbon, Minnesota. The new cases bring the total number of victims to 8, mostly in Hennepin County. The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) warned of the outbreak on May 26 and has since urged people not to consume the Hartman Dairy Farm’s unpasteurized products.
The investigation of Hartmann Dairy Farms is still underway. This far, 28 environmental and animal samples from the farm have tested positive for harmful E. coli, including 26 with the same genetic strain found in the outbreak victims. Of note, 3 manure samples from the dairy’s milking area have been genetically matched to the outbreak strain.
Minnesota Department of Health Explains the Outbreak
The Minnesota Department of Health - long known to be one of the leading health departments in the United States - has released the following question and answer explanation of the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in Minnesota linked to consumption of raw milk produced at Hartman Dairy Farms:
What evidence do you have that raw milk from the Hartmann farm caused the illnesses?
This investigation began like many other foodborne investigations: Someone becomes ill, sees their physician and the physician sends a stool specimen to a clinical laboratory. If that laboratory finds, or “isolates”, one of a number of illness-causing bacteria (eg., Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7), they send that bacterial isolate to the MDH Public Health Laboratory (PHL) for further testing. Each bacterial isolate is DNA fingerprinted by a technique called pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE).
During May 2010, E. coli O157:H7 isolates from 5 patients sent by separate clinical laboratories to the MDH PHL were found to all have the same DNA fingerprint by PFGE testing.
This particular DNA fingerprint type (which also can be called a “strain”) of E. coli O157:H7 had never been seen before in Minnesota. The fact that multiple patients all were infected with this new strain in such a tight timeframe indicates that there was a common source for the illnesses. In other words, the patients must have acquired their infection from the same source.
In any foodborne illness investigation, MDH epidemiologists interview patients about an extensive array of possible exposures. These interviewers use a standard questionnaire and interview technique. This includes asking questions about what the ill people ate, including meat, produce and other food items. It also includes questions about recreational water and drinking water, contact with animals, daycare attendance, and more.
In this outbreak, the ill people came from communities across Minnesota, and the only exposure the cases had in common was consumption of raw dairy products from the Hartmann farm. This connection, and the fact that the same strain of E. coli O157:H7 found in the ill people was found in several animals and from several environmental samples on the Hartmann farm, clearly indicates that the farm was the source of the E. coli O157:H7 that made the people ill. |
