E.Coli Outbreak

E.Coli Outbreak Leads Chipotle to Close 43 Locations

An outbreak of the food-borne illness E. coli has led Chipotle to voluntarily shut down 43 of its stores across two states.

At least 22 had been sickened as of Sunday morning in an outbreak health officials say could be linked to the casual burrito chain.

Nineteen of the cases were reported in Washington State. The other three were in the Portland, Oregon area.

Read: Oregon Girl Contracts Bubonic Plague During Hunting Trip

According to the Washington State Department of Health, seven of the Washington patients were hospitalized. One patient in Oregon was hospitalized.

Just a few thoughts from me on this situation:

Not too long ago Chipolte was considered the fastest growing food chain and could do no wrong. Now they will be hard pressed to survive.

Very few companies survive this kind of negative attention. Especially those that are relatively young like Chipolte is.

This got me to thinking how easy it would be to sabotage a company. You could hire someone to do this easily. Maybe this type of situation happens more often than we think because of corporate espionage.

You never know. People REALLY, REALLY love Chipotle. At least they were proactive about shut downs. That will help.

All the more reason not to eat that crap which is not even remotely Tex-Mex and is only 'food' under a rather broad definition.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

I rather like it.

I hope that this outbreak doesn't make it's way to flori-duh

Chipotle is very tasty. I'm going there for dinner tonight!

I ate at Chipotle in AZ for the first time ...and got veeeery sick a few minutes after my first bite. In fact, I'm just now feeling a bit better and it's been two weeks or so.

An e.coli infection shouldn't hit that fast OR last more than a few days.. .right? I wonder. Weird coincidence if unrelated, though.

I wish I had the discipline to cook at home.

Yeah, a company could be sabotaged this way I suppose. Whether it happened or not is unknown. The chances of them getting contaminated food supplies is actually much more of a practical reason though. Once the E-Coli gets into the restaurant, it can be shifted all around and contaminate many things in the restaurant.. You would have to identify where it came from. All the cases probably came from the same contaminated product. The thing is, the germs can be spread by contact between the foodstuffs and this makes it hard to identify where it came from. It can live on those rubber gloves to be transferred.

To find out a common supplier of their foods is the first thing to do.