CEO pledges to make Chipotle ‘safest place to eat’

Late yesterday, public health officials said they shut down a Chipotle restaurant in Seattle after “repeated food safety violations” found in three consecutive inspections.

Michael Sullivan, sports editor for Boston College’s student newspaper The Heights, reported eight of the members of Boston College’s men’s basketball team were among those infected.

“This is the height of norovirus season”, he said according to the Wall Street Journal.

Local health officials have confirmed that the infection affecting the students was caused by the norovirus, Bloomberg reported.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, an earlier Chipotle E. coli outbreak caused the closure of more than 40 restaurants in nine states.

Chipotle stocks have suffered a major blow as another food contamination case involving 120 people, a lot of them students at Boston College, surfaced.

The Boston investigation has allayed concerns that the E. coli strain has spread there as well, though the evaluations for the bacteria have not yet been returned, Dunn said.

Clearly the company realized a press release wasn’t going to cut it this time, instead sending CEO Steve Ells to face the music on the Today Show.

The burrito restaurant chain has been under scrutiny since November, when health officials first linked it to the E. coli outbreak, the company’s third food safety incident since August.

He said test results from specimens sent to labs were expected back later Tuesday or Wednesday.

Though its not clear yet what menu items are responsible for the E. coli outbreak, the illness causes diarrhea and abdominal cramps and, if left untreated, can lead to a type of kidney failure, according to the CDC.

In its annual report, Chipotle notes that it may be at a higher risk for outbreaks of food-borne illnesses because of its use of “fresh produce and meats rather than frozen, and our reliance on employees cooking with traditional methods rather than automation”. He went on to say that once the implementation of the new food safety practices is complete, the restaurant chain will be 10-15 years ahead of the standards set by the restaurant sector. In addition to being cited for the sick employee who worked last Thursday, the restaurant was not keeping food hot enough.

Benjamin Chapman, an expert on restaurant food safety and a professor at North Carolina State University, warned that the number of norovirus cases could increase within the next few weeks.