The Calgary company at the centre of an E. coli outbreak at several daycares across the city has pleaded guilty to bylaw offences while charges against its directors were dropped Thursday.
Hundreds of children fell ill in September 2023 with dozens hospitalized in an outbreak that the City of Calgary said was traced to Fueling Minds Inc., a catering company that provided meals and snacks to Calgary daycares.
Fueling Minds and its two directors, Faisal Alimohd and Anil Karim, were charged in 2023 with operating without a business licence in September 2023 following the outbreak that began earlier that month and lasted eight weeks.
On Thursday, the corporation pleaded guilty, admitting it did not have a food services business licence at the time of the outbreak.
City of Calgary prosecutor Ed Ring told Justice of the Peace Mathieu St-Germain that he was calling no evidence against the two directors and invited dismissal of the remaining charges.
Court heard that in June 2021, a Fueling Minds administrator inquired with Alberta Health Services via email, asking what further steps were required for approval to operate their food service business.
AHS never responded.
In reading from an agreed statement of facts, Ring told the court that the city had not established that Fueling Minds’ failure to obtain a proper licence caused the E. coli incident, and referenced an ongoing lawsuit against the company, filed by the parents of the children who fell ill.
Ring and Steve Major, the lawyer for Fueling Minds, are now expected to present St-Germain with a joint sentencing proposal.
39 children hospitalized
In September 2023, the City of Calgary said it had traced the outbreak to the catering company that prepared food for its daycares, Fueling Brains, as well as other child-care businesses in the city.
There were at least 448 E. coli cases connected to the outbreak, which resulted in 39 children and one adult being hospitalized.
Of the most severe cases, 23 patients were diagnosed with hemolytic uremic syndrome, a condition that can lead to life-threatening kidney failure.
A report released by Alberta Health Services found the E. coli likely came from a beef meatloaf served from the Fueling Minds central kitchen on Aug. 29, 2023.
The outbreak was the largest of its kind in Alberta’s history and led to a third party review.
The Food Safety and Licensed Facility-Based Child Care Review Panel released 12 recommendations on preventing similar outbreaks in the future.
Recommendations included increasing the frequency of inspections at child-care facilities, mandatory training programs for food workers and improving response times in facilities where food safety concerns are raised.
In the wake of the outbreak, several lawsuits were filed against the company, including a proposed class-action suit that is still before the courts.
