A Minnesota woman’s unborn baby died after she ate sprouts contaminated with listeria grown at Wisconsin’s Jack & the Green Sprouts farm, a lawsuit filed in federal court says.

A lawyer for the farm denies the woman’s allegation. The farm no longer appears to be operating. The woman, Kate Bozic, and her husband are seeking an unspecified dollar amount from the business.

The River Falls, Wisconsin, farm received a warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in March 2025 after samples of the farm’s alfalfa sprouts showed the presence of listeria bacteria on multiple occasions. The bacteria can cause listeriosis, a serious illness that can lead to pregnancy loss.

Bozic purchased and ate products containing the sprouts at Minneapolis co-op grocers and an organic cafe around the summer of 2024. She sought emergency care on Oct. 1, 2024, while experiencing severe symptoms of bacterial infection due to listeria contamination and signs of pregnancy complications, the lawsuit said. Her 17-week-old unborn baby then died.

In an answer to the lawsuit, the farm said its sprouts did not cause the death, and Bozic’s “claimed injuries and damages” might have been caused by her own “negligence, breach of warranty or other fault.”

Bozic’s lawyer, Eric Hageman, said in an email the “science is definitive” in showing the farm’s sprouts are linked to Bozic’s illness.

“This is a company that has had an ongoing problem with l isteria ," Hageman said in an email. "In fact, they should be thankful that more people were not harmed. However, the harm they caused my client was significant and was devastating to her and her family."

Hageman added that there “was nothing whatsoever that my client could have done to prevent this from happening” as people all operate on “blind faith” that food makers are “taking food safety seriously.”

The farm’s lawyer, Timothy Carrigan, declined to comment “with litigation pending.”

The FDA has previously said it had “serious concern” about foodborne illnesses associated with the consumption of raw and undercooked sprouts. In a 2022 guidance document, the agency said it had observed 52 reported outbreaks of illnesses due to contamination of the popular sandwich and salad topping, resulting in 2,700 cases of illness between 1996 and 2020.

The agency said seeds and sprouts may become contaminated at any point along the supply chain, including at the sprout operation.

In 2016, Jack & the Green Sprouts recalled products after an E. coli outbreak linked to the farm’s sprouts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its communication about the recall that sprouts are a known source of foodborne illness.

The FDA inspected the farm in October 2024 and found it violated federal regulations for growing produce for human consumption, noting rodent activity and “food contact surfaces that were not clean and sanitary.”

Regulators with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, which sometimes does inspections for the federal agency, collected two samples that tested positive for listeria, the agency said in the warning letter. The farm additionally tested its own sample from a “finished product” that tested positive, the agency continued. The state regulators collected another sample in January 2025, and it again was positive for the bacteria.

As a result, the farm recalled multiple products. But the contaminated products had already done damage, the lawsuit said.

Credit card data showed that Bozic bought the farm’s sprouts from the Wedge co-op in south Minneapolis in June 2024. She again consumed the sprouts as an ingredient in Tao Organic Cafe’s avocado and vegetable sandwich later in the summer, the suit said.

Hageman, Bozic’s lawyer, said Bozic is listed as “Minnesota Case 1″ of four total cases in a Minnesota Department of Health report about a multistate outbreak of listeria associated with Jack & the Green Sprouts’ alfalfa sprouts. Specimens the department collected showed that the cases were closely related to the same genetic strain, the report said.

The farm said in the answer that Bozic’s “alleged injuries and damages may have been caused by an intervening and superseding cause.” The farm added that she “knowingly and voluntarily assumed all risks associated with the consumption of the product at issue.”

Hageman said, “This case is not a close call.”

“Ms. Bozic is definitively linked to the sprouts outbreak caused by Jack and the Green Sprouts and was matched by whole genome sequencing,” he said.

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