The number of E. coli-related illnesses linked to Chipotle Mexican Grill grew to 52 on Friday, including one in Illinois, as the company said it will raise its food safety standards.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that as of Wednesday, illnesses had been reported by seven more people, including one in Illinois and others in Maryland and Pennsylvania. That brings the number of cases to 52 in nine states. Twenty people have been hospitalized but no deaths have been reported, the agency said.
Divya Mohan Little, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health, said the office was notified of an E. coli case involving someone who ate at Chipotle, and the department was working to determine whether E. coli was contracted at the restaurant.
“For now, (the department) is treating this case as an isolated incident and is not releasing information about the location of the individual,” Mohan Little said in an email.
The Denver-based restaurant chain with more than 1,900 locations said Friday that it has brought on Seattle-based IEH Laboratories to help it find ways to improve food safety practices throughout its operations, from farms to restaurants. It still doesn’t know what ingredient may be linked to the outbreak.
Specifically, Chipotle says it will:
*Implement DNA testing on all its ingredients before they are shipped to restaurants.
*Test ingredients that are near the end of their shelf life to ensure the quality is maintained while they are being stored.
*Improve training to ensure all employees are fully versed on the company’s food handling and safety procedures.
But in striving for higher food safety standards, Chipotle said it may not be able to use as much locally sourced produce.
“We believe that there will be some local suppliers who are not able (or willing) to meet these new standards,” Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold said Thursday, before the safety initiative was announced.
Last month, the company removed language on its website about buying locally and replaced it with a note about supplier relationships. Arnold said that was in part due to the fact that the local program had gone out of season (it runs from June to October for most of the U.S.) and because of the upcoming changes to its food safety procedures. Arnold said the company is preparing for some local produce suppliers not to return next spring.
The planned tightening of food safety standards and possible changes in local sourcing were first reported by Bloomberg News.
Chipotle temporarily closed 43 locations in Washington and Oregon at the end of October after health officials discovered most of the people sickened in an E. coli outbreak had eaten at local restaurants. They were reopened in early November.
Washington and Oregon have the biggest concentration of confirmed cases of E. coli, but illnesses were also previously reported in California, New York, Ohio and Minnesota.
Late last month, the company said it is deep-cleaning restaurants linked to the outbreak, has thrown out food and surveyed employees for possible illness. No Chipotle employees have been ill, it said.
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