Taylor Farms Pacific, Inc.is recalling items sold at 7-Eleven, Costco, Target, Safeway, Albertsons, Raleys, Starbucks and Walmart, among other outlets, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
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The Montana Department of Health discovered the bacteria in Taylor Farms’ Celery and Onion Diced Blend used in a Costco Rotisserie Chicken Salad.
Costco says it uses one supplier for those vegetables in the chicken salad sold in all its USA stores. The sale was stopped the day federal health officials revealed that the salad was linked with new E. coli cases, as per the company.
Dr. Robert Tauxe of the CDC commended state health officials for quickly discovering the outbreak and helping find the links across seven states. Between 10 to 15 percent of people with an E. coli infection will develop HUS which causes kidney failure, seizure, stroke and coma and death.
If you’ve got chicken salad from Costco in your refrigerator, look at the label.
Additional test are required on the vegetables to confirm that they had the same E. coli strain associated with the outburst, which affected 19 people.
Both Costco and Taylor Farms have good reputations for food safety, said William Marler, a Seattle attorney who has represented victims of food-borne illness and whose law firm operates a data base of food poisoning outbreaks.
The multinational membership-only club has had other food contamination issues in the past.
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Tauxe said both investigations are ongoing and he hopes they will eventually find the exact cause of both outbreaks.
