California pumpkin farm reopens after E. coli, according to the co-owner

After health officials linked a San Luis Obispo County pumpkin farm to an outbreak of E. coli that resulted in five confirmed cases and three children in intensive care, the farm’s owners are still trying to get to the bottom of what went wrong.

“I’m destroyed,” Shawn Callaway, co-owner of Brookshire Farms, said Friday, the first day the farm was open to the public after being closed for 10 days during peak pumpkin season.

Following the outbreak of E. coli producer of Shiga toxin, Brookshire Farms voluntarily closed its doors and found itself at the center of a media storm. Callaway’s phone kept buzzing with interview requests from CNN, USA Today, People magazine and other media outlets across the country.

Meanwhile, one of their employees stood at the entrance to the farm to turn away families who were trying to visit the pumpkin patch.

“We’ve been through … about 11 days now of numbness. I can’t explain it,” Callaway told the San Luis Obispo Tribune, a McClatchy Media publication. “I mean, the worries, the fears, the worries, the ups and downs. I mean, how do you explain that? I don’t know.”

Safety has always been their top priority, both for their customers and their employees, he said.

After working as a firefighter for 36 years, he dedicated his life to protecting and saving people. That mission hasn’t changed since he and his wife founded Brookshire Farms 14 years ago on Los Osos Valley Road.

“Our hearts go out to the families, the children and the adults,” Callaway said, adding that he and his wife were both extremely distressed as a result of the outbreak.

Leading up to Halloween, the farm can easily see more than a thousand people a day stopping by to pick a pumpkin or wander through its massive corn maze.

Callaway said the farm’s 17 toilets are regularly cleaned and emptied twice a week. Visitors have access to 17 handwashing stations and eight sanitizing stations. Tables and chairs are cleaned several times a day.

And they don’t have a petting zoo – a major culprit in other E. coli outbreaks. coli, he added.

Callaway said the only known connection between the confirmed cases was that they frequented Brookshire Farms. He did not know of any other common denominators among the infected individuals.

The county said lab tests confirmed E. coli O157 as the specific strain that sickened local patients — but environmental testing at Brookshire Farms only detected that exact E. coli fingerprint. coli anywhere on his land.

“While it is frustrating not to be able to identify the exact source of infection through environmental laboratory testing, this is not unexpected, and bacterial contamination is often temporary and difficult to detect with available sampling methods,” Dr. Christy Mulkerin, county health officer, said in a news release Friday.

Other types of E. coli bacteria were found at Brookshire Farms, but none helped establish the source of the patients’ infections, according to the county. Callaway said the bacteria was discovered in an old cow pie on the hill above the farm.

Shiga toxin-producing E. coli not found on Brookshire farms

Callaway said the five confirmed cases of E. Shiga toxin-producing coli occurred in two groups that visited the farm for two days.

A group walked the nighttime maze around 7 p.m. on October 17. The second group came the next morning.

Callaway doesn’t believe pumpkins are the cause of the outbreak since the first group had no contact with them.

“(The county) has never tested our pumpkins,” he told the Tribune. “They refused to test our pumpkins and said it was not in their area of ​​investigation because the pumpkins did not have the capacity to be tested properly.”

The county said testing was limited due to the large number of potential sources, lack of testable items and delays between exposure and when sampling was done.

Callaway said immediately after the first cases were announced that he was deeply disappointed that the county released information warning people to wash their pumpkins and avoid touching ones that had been carved. These guidelines led San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria to cancel their annual pumpkin-killing events.

Mulkerin later told The Tribune that people shouldn’t worry about pumpkins and that the county “did not intend to say that pumpkins were the source of the infection.”

“We’re really trying to emphasize to the public, ‘Please don’t be afraid of pumpkins,'” she said Oct. 30.

Brookshire Farms reopens with thousands of free pumpkins

Missing the final days of pumpkin season was a huge financial hit for Brookshire Farms — but Callaway declined to go into detail.

“The loss is not important. It’s the safety of our public,” Callaway said. “Yes, it’s a huge loss. Yes, it has affected us a lot. But we will get through this.”

The farm reopened Friday with thousands of pumpkins remaining. Visitors were encouraged to collect free squash for their fall decorating, according to the Brookshire Farms Facebook page.

The county also said any risk of additional exposure had passed Friday and there was no longer a continuing threat to public health.

Brookshire Farms will be open for the Christmas season starting on Thanksgiving.

Callaway once dreamed of expanding its operations in December, but after the fall outbreak, it will return to basics: providing families with holiday memories on their farm, he said.