Brookshire Farms owner speaks out after mysterious E. coli outbreak coli

The owner of the Californian farm linked to the E. coli that left more than 15 people seriously ill, including a 6-year-old boy fighting for his life, said his heart goes out to the suffering families.

Brookshire Farms in San Luis Obispo County reopened Nov. 6 after a 10-day voluntary closure while the Department of Public Health investigated the source of the E. coli outbreak. coli.

“I’m destroyed,” Brookshire Farms co-owner Shawn Callaway told the Tribune Friday as the farm reopened to the public.

“We’ve been through… about 11 days now of numbness. I can’t explain it… I mean, the worries, the fears, the worries, the ups and downs. I mean, how do you explain it? I don’t know,” he added.

​Authorities said 5 people had laboratory-confirmed E. coli O157 infections after visiting the farm on October 17 or 18, while 10 other people who visited the farm between October 16 and 26 developed corresponding symptoms.

​Three children also required pediatric intensive care after developing hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).

Among the affected children is Camden Foy, 6, of Nipomo, who is in critical condition at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford with STEC and HUS after an Oct. 17 visit to Brookshire Farms.

​Her grandmother, Linda Strong-Foy, has been sharing constant updates on her health since she was hospitalized nearly three weeks ago.

Camden was admitted to a hospital in Santa Maria and was subsequently diagnosed on October 27 with HUS, leading to an emergency ambulance transfer to Stanford.

The toddler’s condition quickly escalated into acute neurological complications, leading to severe confusion, brain scans to detect potential stroke or seizure activity, intubation, and multiple rounds of blood and platelet transfusions between October 29 and 30.

“He is on 5 blood pressure medications. An IV drip, 3 oral doses and a blood pressure patch,” Strong-Foy said in a Facebook post Monday.

The SLO County Public Health Department collected water, food and other environmental samples at the farm, but did not specifically find E. coli O157.

The ministry said other types of bacteria, including other strains of E. coli, were found on the farm in some samples, but these results did not identify the source of the E. coli outbreak. coli O157.

“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 Nov. 6 statement.

Callaway said cleanliness is not an issue at the farm, with all 17 toilets cleaned regularly and emptied twice a week. There are also 17 handwashing stations and eight sanitizing stations.

He added that he doesn’t think pumpkins caused the outbreak because many victims had no contact with them.

“(The county) has never tested our pumpkins,” Callaway 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.”

In the days following the outbreak, the county advised residents to wash their pumpkins and avoid touching already carved ones.

As a result, San Luis Opisbo and Santa Maria canceled their annual pumpkin-killing events.

Mulkerin later said the county did not intend to imply 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 told the Tribune.

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