The Calgary company at the centre of a daycare E. coli outbreak is set to be sentenced Tuesday morning after pleading guilty to bylaw offences last month.
In April, Justice of the Peace Mathieu St-Germain accepted the company’s guilty plea to operating without a food services business licence at the time of the outbreak.
Lawyers for Fueling Minds Inc. — a catering company that provided food to local daycares — and the City of Calgary submitted a joint sentencing recommendation last month of a $10,000 fine.
After the sentence is handed down, prosecutor Ed Ring indicated he will ask the judge to withdraw the remaining charges faced by the company’s two directors.
In September 2023, an E. coli outbreak was declared with at least 448 people — mostly children — falling ill.
Of the most serious cases, 39 children and one adult were hospitalized and 23 of those patients were diagnosed with hemolytic uremic syndrome, a condition that can lead to life-threatening kidney failure.
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.
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.
‘Administrative box … not checked’
During the company’s plea, an agreed statement of facts was read aloud.
The company admitted it did not have a food services business licence at the time of the outbreak.
Prosecutor Ed Ring told the court that the city had not established that Fueling Minds’ failure to obtain a proper licence caused the E. coli incident.
Furling Minds’ lawyer Steve Major told the court that the company had a kitchen licence but not a catering licence, “an administrative box that was not checked.”
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.
