The potluck dinner at Salem Lutheran Church in Longville, Minnesota started out like many of those get-togethers - full of good feelings towards each other and the church. It ended with allegedly 17 people sick and one dead from contaminated meat and what could blow up into landmark legal liability issues.
As Matt McKinney reports in the STAR TRIBUNE, the meat slaughterhouse accused of supplying the ground beef allegedly contaminated with E-coli 0157:H7 to the local grocery store and purchased by the church is suing Salem Lutheran Church. That supplier Nebraska Beef Ltd. has claimed that the cause of the contagion was the church kitchen. Those doing the food preparation for the dinner were volunteers.
This lawsuit could send a chill throughout the nation. Any non-profit group which prepares food and serves it could be re-thinking this ritual. Often these potluck dinners are not only a way of establishing a sense of community but raising money. When my nephews were in Catholic school in Edison, New Jersey, I did my share of dinners at St. Helena's and bought raffle tickets for whatever.
Some of those who suffered from the E-Coli outbreak have retained the Marler Clark Law Firm which specializes in food-borne diseases. The lead attorney Bill Marler decries this countersuit from the defendant. On his blog Marler and others argue that the "USDA Inspected Meat" should guarantee that the product is free of contaminants. In this case, it seems that it wasn't. If the meat had not already contained the E-Coli bacteria, there was probably nothing that the church volunteer cooks could have done to cause the illness. Yes, had the leftovers been left out without proper refrigeration, then there might be a link to liability. But that was not the situation.
There is plenty at stake in this particular web of lawsuits. Will our nation decide it's not safe under any circumstances to eat meat and shoot an arrow into the heart of the cattle industry?
Disclosure: Now and then I do editing for Marler Clark.
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