Chipotle Subpoenaed In Criminal Investigation Over Illness Outbreak

Investigators from the U.S. Attorney’s office for California’s central district are working in conjunction with the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations on the Simi Valley case.

The situation continues to escalate as Chipotle was served with a federal subpoena last month surrounding a criminal investigation tied to the norovirus outbreak.

So far there have been no outbreaks associated with Chipotle restaurants in MI. The case was first detected in OR and then Washington and then were subsequently reported in nine different states.

In December, norovirus cases were detected when several Boston College students reported sick after eating at a Chipotle outlet in Brighton, Massachusetts.

Earlier in 2015, the company ran into trouble after suspending a pork supplier that violated its animal welfare standards.

Chipotle also reported its same-store sales fell by almost 15 percent in the quarter, and slashed its earnings estimates by almost a dollar per share. The county was not alerted to the illnesses until the next day, at which point the restaurant had already re-opened.

The subpoena is linked to a norovirus breakout which occurred in August at a restaurant in Simi Valley, California, and will subject the restaurant chain to an investigation by both the FDA and the US attorney’s office in California.

Last August at least 200 people, both customers and employees, were diagnosed with norovirus, a common cause of human gastroenteritis, which can spread through contaminated food and surfaces, New York Times mentioned.

Chipotle said in the filing that the incident was isolated and that it will cooperate fully with the federal investigation.

Since the outbreaks began, the company has had to do a major sanitizing project on all its affected restaurants and send food for testing at government labs, trying to assist public health officials to determine the exact causes of the outbreaks.

Chipotle has not updated outbreak information on its website since December 21.

Chipotle has marketed itself as a more healthy option to fast food, touting itself as the first major national chain to eliminate genetically-modified ingredients from most of its menu.

The company also unveiled a series of changes to be made to its cooking methods in order to increase safety. As of December 17, shortly after the Boston norovirus incident, Chipotle’s Buzz score, which asks consumers whether they’ve heard positive or negative news on a particular brand, stood at -40.