The owner of the California farm linked to the E. coli outbreak that left more than 15 people severely sick, 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 on Nov. 6 after a 10-day voluntary shutdown while the Department of Public Health investigated the source of the E. coli outbreak.
“I am destroyed,” Brookshire Farms co-owner Shawn Callaway told The Tribune Friday as the farm reopened for the public.
“We’ve gone through … about 11 days now of numbness. I can’t explain it… I mean, the worries, the fears, the concerns, 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 Oct. 17 or 18, while 10 additional individuals who visited the farm between Oct. 16 and 26 developed matching symptoms.
Three children also required pediatric intensive care after developing Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS).
Among the affected children is 6-year-old Camden Foy of Nipomo, who is in ᑕriᩚtiᩚcal condition at Stanford’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital with STEC and HUS following an Oct. 17 visit to Brookshire Farms.
His grandmother, Linda Strong-Foy, has been sharing constant updates on his health since his hospitalization nearly three weeks ago.
Camden was admitted to a Santa Maria hospital and subsequently diagnosed on Oct. 27 with HUS, prompting an emergency ambulance transfer to Stanford.
The tot’s condition quickly escalated into acute neurological complications, leading to severe confusion, brain scans for potential stroke or seizure activity, intubation, and multiple rounds of blood and platelet transfusions between Oct. 29 and 30.
“He’s on 5 blood pressure meds. An IV BP drip, 3 orals, and a BP patch,” Strong-Foy said in a Facebook post Monday.
SLO County’s Department of Public Health collected water, food, and other environmental samples at the farm but did not find E. coli O157 specifically.
The department said that other types of bacteria, including other strains of E. coli, were found at the farm in some samples, but those results did not identify the source of the E. coli O157 outbreak.
“Although it’s frustrating to not be able to pinpoint the exact source of the infection through environmental lab testing, this is not unexpected, and bacterial contamination is often temporary and difficult to detect through available sampling methods,” County Health Officer Dr. Christy Mulkerin said in a Nov. 6 statement.
Callaway said cleanliness is not a problem at the farm, with the 17 restrooms cleaned regularly and pumped twice a week. There are also 17 handwashing stations and eight sanitizing stations.
He added that he doesn’t think the pumpkins were the source of the outbreak because many of the victims had no contact with them.
“(The county) never tested our pumpkins,” Callaway told The Tribune. “They refused to test our pumpkins and said it was not in their investigational area because the pumpkins didn’t have the ability to get tested correctly.”
In the days following the outbreak, the county advised residents to wash their pumpkins and avoid touching ones that had already been carved.
As a result, San Luis Opisbo and Santa Maria canceled their annual pumpkin smash events.
Mulkerin later said the county didn’t intend to imply that the 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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