The recent outbreak of E. coli in several Chipotle restaurants in OR and Washington is set to cost the company not only its credibility as a fast food chain giant but also a large chunk of its sales as scared diners are likely to get their burritos somewhere else.
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Chipotle, which is grappling with its third food safety incident this year, has closed 43 restaurants in and around Seattle and Portland because of the E. coli O26 outbreak.
That brings the total number of people sickened by E. coli in Washington and OR to 41.
The company is not planning to close any other restaurants in other states because there is no evidence of a link to other locations, company spokesman Chris Arnold said.
The chain said it has conducted additional deep cleaning and full sanitizing of its restaurants in the area.
The next day, local health officials linked her case to the Chipotle outbreak, according to the suit, which seeks damages of at least $75,000. They already know that the microorganism that is responsible is E. coli O26. Needless to say, all of the food at these locations has been tested and discarded; every Chipotle location is “batch testing a few ingredients before resupplying”.
Three people in the Portland area and 19 people in western Washington have gotten sick with E. coli as of Friday.
“Certainly there will be a short-term sales impact, say over the next month, given the attention and social media buzz – consumers don’t tend to think of food safety issues until they actually happen”, said David Henkes, vice president at food industry research firm Technomic. The E. coli could have been transferred to food transported in a dirty truck or by cross-contamination in a warehouse.
In 2008, health officials initially suspected raw tomatoes to be the source of a salmonella outbreak that sickened people around the country, Hanson said.
While no cause has yet been identified by investigating health officials, Steve Ells, chairman and co-CEO of Chipotle, said the brand is working closely with health department officials to find an answer.
The number of plane crash victims identified by grief-stricken Russian families rose to 33 on Wednesday as rescue teams in Egypt combed the Sinai desert for more remains and parts of the plane’s fuselage. She also said anyone with bloody diarrhea should go to the doctor whether they have eaten at Chipotle or not.
Microbiologist Mi Kang works to identify a strain of E. coli from a…
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In OR, the ages of people involved in the outbreak range from 11 to 61 years old.
