FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.—A restaurant customer in Fort Lauderdale has died of a bacterial infection after eating raw oysters. A Pensacola man died the same way this month. Both cases involved oysters from Louisiana.
Gary Oreal, who manages the Rustic Inn, told the South Florida SunSentinel that the man who died had worked years ago at the restaurant famous for garlic crabs.
“Over the course of 60 years, we have served a couple billion oysters, and we never had anyone get sick like this guy did,” Oreal said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Vibrio bacteria doesn’t make an oyster look, smell, or taste any different. The agency said about 80,000 people get vibriosis in the U.S. each year, and about 100 people die from it….