Personal Injury Law

Largest Hep A Outbreak In US History: A Look Back

By Marler Clark LLP

The on line HealthDay News of the American news magazine, U.S. News & World Report, is filled with stories and information on food-borne illnesses stemming from imports.    It  includes the story of the largest Hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history and updates the progress that one of the seriously injured victims is making five years later. 

One Sunday after church, Rich Miller headed to a local Chi-Chi's restaurant in Beaver, Pa., where he dipped into the house salsa that came with the meal.

That simple act in 2003 changed his life forever. What Miller didn't know was that imported Mexican green onions in the salsa carried a deadly passenger: hepatitis A.

A few days later, as Miller recalled recently, "I couldn't even get out of bed. It was like the worst case of flu that you could ever imagine."

His health quickly deteriorating, the 57-year-old railroad superintendent was diagnosed with rare fulminant hepatitis A disease -- in which the virus destroys the liver -- and was rushed to a Pittsburgh hospital for a liver transplant.

Placed in a medically induced coma for a month, Miller eventually returned home, frail and unable to return to work. To this day, he said, he has mobility problems and neurological difficulties.

Still, Miller considers himself lucky: Four others who ate the salsa and developed fulminant liver illness died. Overall, more than 600 people around Pittsburgh were sickened during what became the largest hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history

The Mexican green onion outbreak at Chi- Chi's came a month after the restaurant chain had filed for bankruptcy.  In 2004, it was forced to shut-down entirely, selling off some of its choice properties to Outback Steakhouse. 

Marler Clark represented many of the victims, including the 9,489 people who got inoculated because of  they were exposed to Hepatitis A at the Beaver Valley Mall Chi-Chi's.  News reports at the time said Seattle-based Marler Clark won millions for its clients in the deadly outbreak, including $6.25 million for Mr. Miller.

Although some of its sites were cherry-picked for use by Outback and others, many abandoned Chi-Chi's remain around the country.

Chi-Chi's line of grocery products, which was big on its salsa, was sold to Hormel.  If Chi-Chi's demise has left you wishing you could still get its salsa, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, provides this recipe:

"Salsa"

Chi-Chi's fresh hot Salsa can easily be replicated with fresh tomatoes, red onions, fresh cilantro, serrano peppers, banana peppers, lime juice and salt. This is actually a "pico" sauce but Chi-Chi's sold it as their fresh salsa. It replaced the standard hot salsa and was served in its place.

The actual recipe from the Chi-Chi's food manual (for the Hot / Pico Salsa ) is as follows:
(Adapted to make 30 servings, Actual recipe made 120 servings)

1 Serrano pepper stemmed & chopped (leave seeds in for more "heat")
3 tsp fresh cilantro
2 TBS sweetened lime juice (Rose's Lime Juice)
2 tsp salt
4 tomatoes chopped drained
1/2 large red onion chopped
1/2 banana pepper chopped
1/2 red pepper

Full post as published by Hepatitis Blog on January 15, 2008 (boomark / email).