DENVER — Two years after a deadly listeria outbreak from tainted Colorado cantaloupe, two more victims have died.
Eighty-six-year old Herb Stevens died Tuesday night at a hospital in Littleton. Charles Palmer, 72, died Saturday in Colorado Springs.
Their attorney, Bill Marler, says both were sickened in the cantaloupe listeria outbreak of 2011. He says neither of them ever fully recovered.
Nearly 150 people across the country got sick and now a total of 33 of them have died. The Centers for Disease Control also links one miscarriage to the outbreak.
See listeria symptoms, prevention tips and other resource information
It was the worst foodborne illness outbreak in nearly a century in the United States.
“It’s changed everyone’s lives in my family,” Herb Stevens’ daughter Jennifer Exley told FOX31 Denver in 2012. “We are very bitter about somebody just simply eating a cantaloupe and then getting so sick that they’re hospitalized or in a nursing home.”
After an investigation, congress found the cases of listeria could have been avoided if Jensen Farms in Holly, Colorado had followed U.S. food safety guidelines.