I have spent over 30 years representing people whose lives have been ruined by a single meal. I sat across from parents in hospital waiting rooms, watched children with kidney failure, and held the hands of families who buried children who just wanted to eat hamburgers. I have testified before Congress, fought the meat industry in court, funded scientific research out of my own pocket, and petitioned the federal government to strengthen the protections the industry has sworn to destroy. And just to be clear, I thought we largely won the ground beef war.
I was wrong. Or at least I didn’t pay enough attention.
This week we learned that nine Californians, six of them children, became infected with E. coli O157:H7 after eating beef kofta from The Kebab Shop restaurant chain. Five people were hospitalized. Two people suffered from hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). This syndrome is a devastating kidney complication that has seen me steal my childhood and permanently damage my organs. Beef kofta (seasoned ground beef kebabs) are produced by Olympia Food Industries in Franklin Park, Illinois, and supplied to kebab shops in California, Texas, and Florida. The restaurant ceased operations on May 18. FSIS has now issued a public health alert.
good. But it’s not enough. Here’s why this is important: We’ve been here before. We have been here many times before.
1993: The outbreak that changed everything – and me
I was a young lawyer in Seattle when Jack in the Box served burgers contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 to hundreds of customers across the Pacific Northwest. Four children died. Dozens more developed HUS. My client was a 9-year-old girl named Brianne Kiner. She was in a coma for 42 days. She suffered kidney failure and permanent nerve damage. I got her a $15.6 million settlement, the largest settlement at the time, and I have never been the same lawyer or the same person since.
What Jack in the Box exposed was not simply the failure of a restaurant chain. It was a systemic failure. The industry knew that E. coli O157:H7 could live in the intestines of cattle and contaminate meat during slaughter and grinding. They knew it but did almost nothing about it. The burden quietly fell on consumers. Cook your burgers to 160 degrees and you’ll be fine. Children got sick and died because no one in the supply chain was willing to take responsibility.
That has changed. Because it had to be that way.
1994: The government finally took action.
A year after Jack in the Box, FSIS Administrator Michael Taylor took steps the meat industry said were legally unacceptable and economically disastrous. He declared E. coli O157:H7 as an adulterant in raw ground beef. There are no risks to manage. There is no risk of disclosure. Dulterant – A tainted burger means the product is now adulterated and cannot be legally sold.
The industry filed a lawsuit. They lost. HACCP plans are mandated. Cooking temperature posted. Testing has begun in earnest. It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t fast enough. But the regulatory framework that emerged at that moment saved countless lives.
1998-2002: Progress halted
Even with the new rules in place, the outbreak continued. In 2002, ConAgra recalled 19.6 million pounds of ground beef from its Greeley, Colorado plant, the second-largest meat recall in U.S. history at the time. Marler Clark represented 33 victims, including six children with HUS and the family of a deceased Ohio woman. The USDA eventually closed the Greeley plant due to repeated failures to prevent fecal contamination.
In 2002, I testified before Congress and issued what became a somewhat famous challenge in food safety circles. I asked the USDA and the beef industry to put me out of business. Stop the outbreak. Make your burgers safe. I don’t want this to be the case. No lawyer should ever want a case like this. Because when these cases are taken on, children are harmed.
2007: Stephanie Smith and Cargill Hamburgers
In 2007, Stephanie Smith, a 22-year-old dance instructor from Cold Spring, Minnesota, ate a hamburger produced by Cargill. She developed HUS. She was left paralyzed from the waist down.
Her story became a front page investigation in the New York Times. This is a shocking portrait of how ground beef is actually made. Trims from multiple suppliers are mixed together and tested only after grinding. Once contamination was discovered, it was impossible to trace the source because the ingredients were already mixed. I represented Stephanie in her lawsuit. Her story directly contributed to changes in the way the industry tests and tracks ground beef ingredients.
2009: Battlefield expansion
In 2009, a major E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to ground beef became rare. The regulations worked. However, I have become increasingly concerned that other dangerous strains, such as non-O157 Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC), are being completely ignored because they are not subject to adulterant designation.
So I gave $500,000 of my own money to research with Dr. Mansour Samadpour, a microbiologist at the Institute of Environmental Health. We tested 5,000 retail packages of ground beef nationwide for all STEC strains. Contamination of approximately 2% was found. It sounds like a small thing until you calculate it. Billions of pounds of ground beef are sold each year, and regulators are not required to test for most pathogens that can cause death.
In 2012, FSIS declared ground beef to contain six additional non-O157 STEC strains as adulterants. Disease caused by that variant has since declined. The industry expected disaster. As always, the sky did not fall.
2026: Kebab Shops and What We Haven’t Solved Yet
It takes me back to California. Nine sick people, six of them children. Two cases of acute renal failure. There shouldn’t be another ground beef outbreak in 2026.
Beef Kofta from The Kebab Shop is basically minced beef. Although they are seasoned and shaped differently than hamburger patties, the fundamental risks are the same. Ground beef is particularly susceptible to E. coli contamination because the grinding process disperses surface bacteria throughout the product. Pathogens on the outside of the steak can be killed by grilling. If a pound of ground beef contains pathogens, it must be thoroughly cooked all the way through.
Kofta presents additional complications. It is often cooked quickly on a grill over high heat, leaving a charred exterior and sometimes a pink center. This is how it is traditionally prepared and how many customers expect it. In a fast casual restaurant environment where portions are high and grill temperatures are variable, it is really difficult to achieve a uniform 160 degrees across all skewers. That’s not an excuse. This is why incoming products must be tested more rigorously to ensure supply chains are free of pathogens before they reach the grill.
We don’t yet know all the details about where the contamination entered this chain. The supplier, Olympia Food Industries, is currently under scrutiny. FSIS testing identified E. coli O157:H7 in raw ground beef kofta samples. Questions about whether specific product samples match the outbreak strain are still being resolved. What we do know is that systems, from ranches to processors to distributors to restaurant kitchens, will allow deadly pathogens to reach children’s dinner tables in 2026.
still to do
I have been following this industry for 30 years. I have seen amazing progress. I have also watched progress stall and the political will to go further erode just when we needed it most.
Here’s what I know:
• Test ingredients as well as finished products before grinding. The Cargill incident revealed that it is impossible to identify contaminated raw materials by testing only at the end of the process. All ingredients in ground beef and seasoned ground beef products must be tested before entering the grinder.
• Mandatory recovery rights must be realistic. FSIS may issue public health alerts. FSIS may request a voluntary recall. FSIS cannot force a recall. In 2026, that will still be true. It shouldn’t be like that.
• The restaurant industry needs to catch up. The grocery industry has made real progress in testing and supplier validation. The same rigor should be applied to the fast-casual restaurant sector, which sources and processes ground beef on a massive scale. “Suppliers Are Responsible” is not a food safety program.
• Don’t let koftas and kebabs slip through the cracks of justice. Ground beef is ground beef, whether shaped into patties or skewers. The same impurity rules, the same testing requirements, and the same traceability standards must apply to all forms of product.
personal note
I am a food safety lawyer. Our company’s success is, for better or worse, tied to food safety failures. I was accused of having a financial interest in the outbreak. And I won’t pretend that the irony escapes me.
But I funded $500,000 for the research. I testified for free. I wrote a comment that made enemies. The reason I did it was because I saw a 9-year-old girl wake up from a 6-week coma and have to learn how to walk again. And rich countries with the regulatory capacity to prevent this decided this was unacceptable.
No one has died from the kebab shop outbreak. I am grateful for that. But both children suffered kidney failure, and we still don’t know what their future holds. This is the real cost of every gap in our food safety system, not headlines or lawsuits or meat processor stock prices. It’s a child lying in a hospital bed eating lunch and believing that someone in the supply chain is paying attention.
Someone has to keep paying attention. I think so.
