Testimony of the Mother of a Victim of Hepatitis A Transmitted by School Lunch

Susan Doneth
15630 Kesselwood Trail
Marshall, MI 49068
April 30, 2025

Prepared for "Kids and Cafeterias: How Safe are Federal School Lunches"
Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring, and the District of Columbia, and House Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations

    Before I begin my testimony, I would like to thank Senator Richard Durbin for inviting me to participate in this hearing today.

My name is Susan Doneth and I am the mother of a child who became extremely ill with Hepatitis A after eating frozen strawberries served in her school lunch. My daughter, Lindsay, innocently consumed a strawberry dessert at school and 28 days later, she became extremely ill. I am a member of S.T.O.P. - Safe Tables Our Priority, and I am submitting this testimony in order to share with you the devastating affects of foodborne illness.

When Lindsay first began exhibiting symptoms, she complained of severe body aches, headache, and abdominal pain. She had a high fever and began vomiting. Assuming that Lindsay had the flu, I kept her home from school. After four days, it became apparent that something was seriously wrong. Lindsay was no longer able to eat or drink and she would sob because her abdominal pain was so severe. Alarmed, we took Lindsay to the emergency room. She was severely dehydrated and her urine was the color of weak coffee. The physician immediately suspected Hepatitis and admitted Lindsay to the hospital. Lindsay was so dehydrated that the medical personnel had difficulty finding a vein to start an IV. I had to leave the room as my husband and the nurses held my screaming child down in order to get a needle in her arm.

Lindsay would remain in the hospital for six days. During that time, my husband and I would sit by her bed and pray that she would stop vomiting. I have never seen a child so sick and I cannot describe to you what it is like to witness a child so ill, especially when that child is your own. At one point, Lindsay stopped communicating with us and would barely open her eyes. We watched helplessly and she groaned in her sleep while tears silently rolled down her cheeks. She was only able to whisper, "Mommy, it hurts everywhere." Lindsay had not eaten or had anything to drink in over a week, yet she continued to dry heave trying to expel the poison in her body. She was on continuous IV fluid, pain medication, and anti-nausea drugs. During her hospitalization, she lost 10% of her body weight. For months after she left the hospital, she battled hair loss, fatigue, and suffered from excruciating shingles twice. She continued to complain of unexplained back pain and we returned often to the doctor.

In the weeks following Lindsay’s illness, hundreds of Michigan schoolchildren became ill with Hepatitis A, most of them in the town where I live. Contaminated frozen strawberries had somehow slipped through the supposed food safety net and been widely distributed in the school lunch program. As a consumer, I was baffled as to how this could happen. As a mother, I was outraged. I began asking questions and demanding answers that no one could give me. Nobody could explain to me how such a thing happened. I learned that there are so many different agencies involved in overseeing the safety of our food supply, there are gaping holes that exist in the present system. I also learned that even though school lunches are served to children who are the most vulnerable population in terms of foodborne illness, there is little in place ensuring their safety. Companies supplying food to be served in school lunches should have to meet a higher standard of safety, not a lower one. More importantly, there must be trace back capability and accountability when a foodborne outbreak occurs. We must be able to pinpoint exactly where the food came from and make sure that it is not further distributed. In addition, if a company has had critical violations in the past, or has distributed something that is contaminated, they should be forever barred from doing further business with the Federal School Lunch Program.

There are a few important points that I would like to make. First, foodborne illness victims continue to be ignored as "real" victims. Often, the source of their foodborne illness is never discovered because it is often impossible to trace back the contaminated product to it’s source. We should have the ability to track our food from the farm to the fork. Only then will there be adequate accountability which will help improve the safety of the food we are consuming.

Second, there should also be a single food safety agency charged with overseeing the safety of the food supply. The fragmented system currently in place is clearly not working. Currently, there are more than a dozen agencies involved in overseeing the safety of the food supply. This severely complicates matters when the source of a foodborne illness falls into multiple jurisdictions. In the case of the contaminated frozen strawberries that caused the Hepatitis A epidemic, FDA oversees fruit, but USDA has jurisdiction for the Federal School Lunch Program. Ultimately, nobody is willing to take responsibility and it leaves room for blame-shifting and a whole lot of red tape.

Third, I would like to address public education. Although public education about foodborne illness and it’s prevention is important, too much emphasis is placed on this by industry and often government. As a consumer, I am not responsible for "cleaning up" dirty food, or cooking cow feces out of my hamburger meat. The food that my family consumes should not be contaminated to begin with. After my daughter Lindsay became ill, I became VERY educated about foodborne illness. I did everything possible to protect my family and still, we were not protected.

Tragically, 18 months after Lindsay was stricken with Hepatitis A, my oldest daughter, Sara, then 14 years-old, was poisoned with E.coli 0157:H7. She spent over two weeks in a hospital and went into the life threatening complication Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS) and went into kidney failure. She was rushed by ambulance to a children’s hospital in another city. There, she endured blood transfusions, endless pain and vomiting, bloody diarrhea, and her pancreas was severely compromised. Again, I had to watch as another child of mine was held down by hospital personnel while needles, tubes, and various equipment was attached to her.

The team of pediatric nephrologists treating Sara were trying to prepare my husband and I for the possibility that our child might die because she was so ill. I remember sitting in the hospital in denial. Still not believing that such a thing could be happening to my family a second time. I had done everything right. I had educated myself about foodborne illness, I had become politically involved in the issue, and I had done everything in my power to protect my children. Clearly, it wasn’t enough and it did nothing to protect us from becoming victims again. Sara now has permanent kidney damage, high blood pressure and continues to see a pediatric nephrologist on a regular basis. I thank God every day that my daughter is still with us and didn’t lose her life like many victims have.

We were never able to trace the source of Sara’s illness. Because hundreds of people had not become ill, it was never investigated thoroughly by the local health department. Sara could have gotten sick from something I cooked, she could have gotten sick from something she ate in a restaurant, or she could have been poisoned by something served in her school lunch. We will probably never know and that is a difficult thing to live with. Incredibly, she was not important enough to even warrant an investigation. As a mother, I refuse to sit back while industry points their fingers at consumer education and somehow insinuates that I am to blame for my children getting sick, or it wasn't prevented because of something I didn't do. My children and I did nothing wrong and we are not to blame.
As a citizen, I expect public health and safety to be the paramount concern of lawmakers. The Lindsay and Sara Doneth’s of this world are not expendable in the pursuit of cheaper, less burdensome regulations. Furthermore, when the government is entering into contracts with food suppliers, the contract should not go to the lowest bidder if they aren’t also the safest bidder.

Foodborne illness victims should be given the opportunity to tell their stories in forums such as this hearing today. It seems that participating in government as a citizen is almost impossible if one works full time and lives outside the beltway. Most foodborne illness victims and their families are average people like myself and not politicians, but nobody understands this issue better than someone who has experienced it. I hope that when you are reading your statistics and making your decisions, you will remember these statistics are not just numbers. They represent real people, many who were not as lucky as my daughters and paid for their trust in the current food safety system with their lives.

I thank the committee for allowing me to share these comments today.