Chipotle planning to reopen outlets in Washington, Oregon

Mexican food chain, Chipotle Mexican Grill has indicated that it planning to reopen its outlets in Washington state and OR as soon as Wednesday this week following concerns over an outbreak of E. coli bacteria from the eateries. Chipotle voluntarily closed 43 restaurants in Washington and OR last week after the outbreak.

The company says it has received results of 900 tests for E. coli on samples form restaurant equipment and surfaces and all of them were negative.

Restaurant inspectors found no problems at the restaurant, Apa said, and all the product that would have been implicated had been served by the time food safety specialists investigated.

As of November 9, 27 people in Washington and 15 in OR have been diagnosed with infections from shiga-toxin producing E. coli O26 in food that came from a handful of Chipotle stores.

The WSDH said the source of the outbreak might never be identified, because the contaminated source of food may have been consumed before samples were collected for testing. Chipotle said health officials have concluded there is no ongoing risk from the incident, and the company has replaced all ingredients in the closed restaurants with a fresh supply of new ingredients.

Chipotle said Tuesday that it’s reopening the restaurants over the next few days after giving them a deep cleaning and ordering a fresh supply of ingredients.

In the days or weeks it takes to identify and link multiple cases of foodborne illnesses, the tainted perishable foods likely to blame for such an outbreak are probably long gone, leaving behind an epidemiological mystery, health officials say.

Many local health inspections are starting today.

Marler said Chipotle has issues with food safety.

Many of these illnesses involve people eating at home, but even restaurant-related outbreaks are fairly common, said Dr. Paul Cieslak, medical director for communicable diseases at Oregon’s state health agency.

The King County Dept. of Health confirmed that there were a handful of cases associated with Chipotle in late July.

A Seattle attorney who specializes in food-safety cases and whose daughter was a frequent customer of the Chipotle in the earlier case was upset when he heard about that outbreak.

In Washington, the most recent case reported eating at Chipotle on October 24.

“If there are opportunities to do better, we will push ourselves to find them and enhance our already high standards for food safety“.