Chipotle linked to new E.coli outbreak with different strain this time

The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Tuesday said that the E. coli outbreak which was linked with the rotisserie chicken salad sold by warehouse club operator Costco Wholesale Corp seems to be over now.

Health officials have still not found the cause of an E. coli outbreak at restaurants owned by Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. All five said they ate at a Chipotle the week before they got sick. All five people reported eating at Chipotle in the week before they became ill.

The Chipotle spokesperson said that “we have completed a comprehensive reassessment of our food safety programs with an eye to finding best practices for each of the ingredients we use”. The company is in the process of implementing these programs.

Chipotle’s shares slumped as much as 4.6 percent to $498.20 Tuesday in NY. The company is also working with outside food experts.

“The Chipotle foodborne illness case will now be studied by restaurant PR officials for years if not decades to come”, Ivankoe writes. Arnold added that the company thinks the illnesses are connected to the larger, previously reported outbreak.

The FDA conducted a traceback investigation of the FDA-regulated ingredients used in the chicken salad to try to determine which ingredient was linked to illness, but the traceback did not identify a common source of contamination, according to the CDC.

The CDC released information about the new illnesses as part of an update on the wider outbreak. Those cases were linked to norovirus, and Chipotle has said they were unrelated to the E. coli outbreak.

The Centers for Disease Control said it is looking into an outbreak of a different DNA fingerprint of E. coli that sickened one person in Kansas, one person in North Dakota and three people in Oklahoma. The restaurant chain hired IEH Laboratories & Consulting Group to help refine its procedures.

In an effort to restore public trust, Chipotle CEO Steve Ells has stressed in multiple TV appearances over the last couple weeks that no E. coli cases were contracted by customers eating at stores after November 7.

Mansour Samadpour, head of IEH Laboratories, said after the restaurants reopened that the new procedures made Chipotle an industry leader.