The mother of a man who got E. coli poisoning at Folklorama's Russian Pavilion says news of the outbreak should have come sooner.

Katherine, who didn't want her last name used, said her 23-year-old son developed severe abdominal cramping, and bloody diarrhea four days after eating at the cultural festival in early August.

She said the emergency room doctor told them to come back if his condition didn't improve in two days, so they did.

"The pain was worse, he couldn't sit up," said Katherine. "He could only lay down, the pain was so bad."

On Wednesday, doctors informed them the pain was due to E. coli poisoning.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said at least 16 have become ill since the beginning of August and all but one had visited the pavilion. Four people required hospitalization.

Katherine said no one notified her family there had been an outbreak. She found out about it by listening to the news.

"It's a little too late, because there's probably a lot of people who got sick," she said.

Katherine said her son is now recovering.

"He lost a lot a weight," she said. "And believe me he didn't have a lot to lose."

Katherine is a long-time Folklorama volunteer, and she won't quit going. But she would like to see stricter food handling practices.

Russian Pavilion organizer Darrell Ostrowski said precautions were made to ensure food-borne outbreaks do not occur.

"It's frustrating because I know how much we go through to try and make sure this doesn't happen," said Ostrowski.

He said the pavilion is having trouble figuring out how it happened.

"We don't know where to look because we would have [served] 150 bowls of soup out of one thing, certainly more people would get ill," he said. "It's hard for us to understand how it could have happened."

Some of the pavillion's leftover juices, vegetables and desserts have been turned over to health officials for testing.

Folklorama said it will review its food-handling protocol.