Chipotle E. Coli Outbreak Expands to Pennsylvania

[The Bobster]

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news...ipotle-Expands-to-Pennsylvania-360590561.html

Chipotle E. Coli Outbreak Expands to Pennsylvania
Published 5 hours ago

An outbreak of E. coli linked to Chipotle restaurants has sickened seven more people and expanded to three additional states including Pennsylvania.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a total of 52 cases have now been reported in nine states, including Illinois, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The most recent illness started on Nov. 13, it said.

The CDC didn't specify where the Pennsylvania case occurred.

Most the illnesses have been in Oregon and Washington, where cases were initially reported at the end of October. Additional cases were later reported in California, Minnesota, New York and Ohio.

The CDC had said in late November that additional cases could be reported for illnesses that started after Oct. 31. Of the 52 people infected, the CDC says 47 reported eating at a Chipotle Mexican Grill in the week before the illness started. The agency has not yet determined the ingredient responsible.

Earlier Friday, Chipotle announced it was tightening its food safety standards.

The Mexican food chain said it hired IEH Laboratories in Seattle to help improve its system, and that new procedures will include testing of all produce before it is shipped to restaurants. It said it will also enhance employee training for food safety and handling.

Chipotle has not yet said how sales have been affected by the bad publicity from the E. coli outbreak, but said it would provide a financial update before its presentation at the Bernstein Consumer Summit on Tuesday. In October, the company had forecast sales at established locations would be up in the low- to mid-single digit percentages for 2015.

Chipotle said Friday it tested ingredients before, but that it is moving to testing smaller batches and a larger number of samples.

"In testing for pathogens, in many ways you're looking for needles in haystacks. Through this high resolution testing program, we are making the haystacks smaller by working with smaller lots," the company said.

It said that no ingredients that are likely to have been connected to the incident remain in its restaurants or supply system.

 

[The Bobster]

http://www.vdare.com/posts/chipotle...s-e-coli-with-them-eat-at-chick-fil-a-instead

Chipotle Hires Illegals From Mexico–And Gets E. Coli With Them (Eat At Chick-Fil-A Instead!)
December 23, 2015, 4:33 pm

Here’s another reason not to eat at Chipotle. Besides the fact that Chipotle’s business model is based on illegal immigration, the food Chipotle’s serves will kill you. It has had a problem with sanitation and safe food handling for some time. And that is undoubtedly related to it’s hiring practices favoring illegal aliens from Third World countries with no tradition or expectation of personal hygiene. (As VDARE.com’s James Fulford has pointed out, many Mexican immigrants have either never heard of, or don’t believe in, the Germ Theory of Disease.) And the problem is getting worse.

Ars Technica December 23, 2015 by Beth Mole

FDA And CDC Probe Second Wave Of Chipotle E. Coli Outbreak

Amid an ongoing E. coli outbreak investigation at Chipotle Mexican Grill, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday announced that it is joining the effort to investigate what may be a second wave of illnesses linked to the chain restaurant. The new illnesses are caused by the same type of E. coli found in the previous cases—Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O26 (STEC 026)—but with a different, rare genetic variant.

To investigate this second wave, the FDA has combined forces with state and local authorities, plus the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which on Monday first announced an investigation into five cases of the variant E. coli infections. Those cases included one in Kansas, one in North Dakota, and three in Oklahoma. The sickened people from Kansas and North Dakota reportedly ate at the same Chipotle restaurant in Kansas before falling ill. The three sickened in Oklahoma were separate cases, but all three reportedly ate at the same Chipotle, the FDA reported.

The new cases, if confirmed, would bring the new E. coli outbreak numbers to 58 sickened and 12 states affected. The other states linked are California (3 cases), Illinois (1), Maryland (1), Minnesota (2), New York (1), Ohio (3), Oregon (13), Pennsylvania (2), and Washington (27). All of the cases involve some form of the STEC 026 bacteria.

Usually, the germ causes severe diarrhea, often bloody, and abdominal cramps two to eight days after a person eats contaminated food. But STEC 026 can also cause more severe illness, which can lead to kidney failure. There have been no reports of death in the outbreak.

Based on the data so far, the FDA and CDC suspect that a common ingredient or menu item is the source of all recent STEC 026 cases. The agencies, along with local and state officials, are using whole genome sequencing to track the germ. But to date, the source is unknown.

This blog has long documented Chipotle’s business model based on hiring illegal aliens and has been doing so from the start of it’s founding, with documentation of their policy of hiring illegal aliens from as far back as 2010 surfacing. There was an ICE SVU criminal investigation of Chipotle, but the case was apparently ended with no action after a few arrests, but most were merely fired, not arrested. Undoubtedly related to Chipotle’s hiring of former ICE SVU head Julie Myers to head it’s defense team. In fact, Chipotle has a business model based on low wage workers, not technology, and the CEO of Chipotle’s admits it. And you can’t have low wages without using illegal immigration, as Chipotle’s is finding out as it avoids raising wages and fires legal workers who unionize.

Chipotle’s is a threat to your health and hates American workers. Why not just avoid dying from E. coli and undermining American workers by not eating where the food might kill you?

 

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2016/01/06/criminal-investigation-underway-at-chipotle/

Criminal investigation under way at Chipotle
By Associated Press
January 6, 2016 | 9:48am

NEW YORK — Chipotle has been served with a federal subpoena as part of a criminal investigation tied to a norovirus outbreak at one of its restaurants in California.

The investigation is being conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California in conjunction with the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday.

The subpoena, received last month, requires the company to produce a broad range of documents tied to a restaurant in Simi Valley, California, that was the source of a norovirus outbreak this past August, it said.

A Chipotle spokesman, Chris Arnold, said in an email the company does not discuss pending litigation, but that it intends to cooperate fully with the investigation.

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. has been reeling since an E. coli outbreak linked to its restaurants in late October and November, which was followed by a separate norovirus outbreak at a restaurant in Boston in December. The cases have received far more national media attention than the norovirus outbreak in California.

Chipotle said sales plunged 30 percent in December. The company expects sales to fall 14.6 percent at established locations for the full fourth quarter, marking the first decline since the company went public in 2006.

To rehabilitate its image, the company has taken out full-page ads apologizing to customers in dozens of newspapers around the country. It has also vowed changes to step up food safety at its restaurants.

 

[The Bobster]

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news...break-Over-CDC-Food-Ingredient-367236691.html

Chipotle-Linked E. Coli Outbreaks Over, Cause Unknown: CDC
Published 5 hours ago

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has closed its investigation into E. coli outbreaks linked to the popular fast-food franchise Chipotle Mexican Grill.

In its final report, issued Monday, the CDC said the outbreaks appear to be over. Investigators were unable to identify a specific ingredient linked to the illnesses, according to the report.

Two E. coli outbreaks related to Chipotle sickened a total of 60 people in 14 states, including California, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington, the CDC said. Twenty-two patients were hospitalized.

The first illnesses were reported last October in Washington and Oregon. The most recently reported illness occurred Dec. 1, 2015.

Chipotle has also been linked to norovirus outbreaks in Boston and Simi Valley, California.

The chain has since doubled down on its food safety measures, which executives said last month will reduce the risk of another illness outbreak to "near zero."

Chipotle undertook an aggressive revamping of food preparation methods at its more than 1,900 locations. But the outbreak drove the company's stock down by 26 percent over the past three months and it warned of a potentially sizeable hit to profits last month.

Shares are rebounding sharply in midday trading.