Several employees implicated the office manager in wrongdoing, leading Miller to confess July 6 in writing to substituting mammography film images in her resubmission to ACR for accreditation. Also charged in a separate indictment was C.R.G. Imaging. Carol Lewis is a staff writer for FDA Consumer. Sales Co. Inc. also was banned from selling produce to any federal programs and was placed on three years probation. The federal agency made the fruit available to schools in several states.
Federal law requires food used in the school lunch program to be grown in the United States.
After tracing the strawberries to remote ranch properties near Mexico's San Quentin and Baja California Norte areas, FDA investigators determined it was possible that workers harvested the fruit under unsanitary conditions. The agency found that the strawberry fields had open-pit latrines, and workers had no ready way to wash their hands. At least 200 Michigan students and teachers were sickened by the contaminated fruit, and about 50 other cases of sickness in other states were reported. Hepatitis A is a highly infectious virus usually spread through contact with human fecal material. It is rarely fatal, but it can cause inflammation of the liver and produce flu-like symptoms, as well as fatigue, nausea, and abdominal pain.