14 (88%) of 16 people purchased or ate rotisserie chicken salad from Costco in the week before illness started.
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However, Alicia Cronquist, an epidemiologist at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said, “We are working with Costco”.
Another recent E. coli outbreak, linked to Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., widened from the Pacific Northwest to other states, the CDC said Friday.
Seattle attorney Bill Marler, who is representing people sickened in the Chipotle outbreak, said the problem appears serious because two people have developed kidney failure.
On the other hand experts say that the number of HUS might go up as they are easy to track.
Five people have been hospitalized. The company uses the same supplier for those vegetables in the chicken salad sold at all locations across the U.S. This isn’t the first time Costco has found itself in the middle of a food contamination scandal, reported Reuters.
Montana health officials issued an “urgent message” to consumers November 24, but it did not specify what ingredient in the chicken salad was suspect.
“We’re pretty confident the path that everyone seems to be on is correct”, he said. “Even if some of the rotisserie chicken salad has been eaten and no one has gotten sick, throw the rest of the product away”.
Exposure to an E-coli bacteria has made five Utahns sick so far and two of those have been hospitalized. Ill people range in age from 5 years to 84, with a median age of 18.
This current strain that has been linked to Costco was identified, as E. coli 157 that the CDC has said is more apt to be more harmful in particular for young children. That outbreak sickened 40 people and closed 43 restaurants in Washington and Oregon.
Tauxe said both investigations are ongoing and he hopes they will eventually find the exact cause of both outbreaks.
“I think we’re going to learn something important from both ultimately”, he said. Illness can be severe and include diarrhea, often bloody, and abdominal cramps. Those symptoms usually begin three to four days after eating contaminated food.
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Officials from the health agency are urging people who bought chicken salad to drop it in the trash, wherever they have bought it recently.
