Settlement reached for Winnipeg boy permanently disabled by tainted beef

A 14-year-old Winnipeg boy who was left with permanent multiple disabilities after eating ground beef tainted with deadly E. coli bacteria has been awarded more than $2.5 million.

The settlement was approved by a Winnipeg judge last month after terms were reached between the teen's family, meat processor XL Foods, grocer Westfair Foods and Manitoba's Public Trustee.

The boy was just two when he suffered a massive stroke and needed a kidney transplant after eating meat purchased from a Winnipeg store.

Court was told the teen's life expectancy has been greatly reduced as a result.

Lawyers for XL Foods and Westfair could not be reached for comment.

"The events were quite tragic,'' Chris Wullum, the family's lawyer, said on Thursday. "The hamburger meat he consumed left catastrophic injuries. The family is pleased that a fair settlement was reached that will allow them to look after him.''

The boy, who is a permanent ward of Metis Child and Family Services, was just two in 2004 when his mother fed him Hamburger Helper with ground beef she had bought at a Superstore.

The mother got sick, but her son became severely ill and had to be hospitalized. He needed a kidney transplant and he suffered a massive stroke in his middle cerebral artery, leaving him with severe spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy and permanent cognitive impairments.

Doctors didn't know if he was going to survive during the first couple of years. The court was told the illness has reduced the boy's estimated life expectancy to 27 years.

The teen has been living with his grandparents since 2009. A report prepared for the courts says he's been going to school on weekdays, but he needs to use a custom modified tilt-in-space wheelchair, is tube fed, is incontinent, and needs to be repositioned every two hours at night.

The boy is ``fully dependant on others for his daily care needs -_ and therefore cannot be left unattended,'' a report states.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency launched a recall of ground beef products in August 2004 after two people in Manitoba were poisoned with E. coli bacteria the month before. A Public Health Agency of Canada report later that year said 27 people became ill after consuming beef tainted with the same strain of E. coli.

Court documents said the agency tested frozen ground beef, still in the family's freezer, and found it was contaminated with that strain of E. coli.

The family launched a lawsuit against Westfair Foods and XL Foods in 2011.

The settlement saw XL Foods drop its counter lawsuit against the boy's mother, in which it claimed she had been at fault for not cooking the ground beef properly.

According to the Health Canada website, the chance of contracting hamburger disease can be reduced by cooking ground beef to an internal temperature of 71 C or 160 F.