Dr. Frank Esper, a pediatric infectious disease physician at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, said the first E. coli outbreak that sickened 53 people across nine states and over at least four weeks could indicate that the fresh food was already contaminated before it left the supplier.
He pointed out that some suppliers can use produce from multiple farms and if something is contaminated, the result can be wide-reaching problems for consumers.
“[It can] create a large bottleneck from lots of farms and goes to one distribution and sends it out to entire regions of U.S.,” Esper explained, of how large suppliers can mix together produce from multiple farms.
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, said health officials will be looking at food records to try to see which food went to which locations in the hopes of identifying a source for the recent E. coli outbreaks.
“We don’t know if it’s the same food item or related food item or completely different in each [outbreak],” Schaffner told ABC News today. “At the moment, we’re all kind of scratching our heads.”
Schaffner said the genetic differences between the bacteria in these two E. coli outbreaks were slight, but that it remains unclear whether they were related. He said Chipotle will have to rethink its entire supply chain to keep customers safe and not have to cook virtually all food to ensure its safety.
“If you cook food thoroughly, you’ll kill all pathogens before it arrived at the restaurant. However, virtually every restaurant chain provides some food that’s not cooked,” Schaffner explained. “If that food is fresh produce, then you’re dependent on the whole chain going from the farm to the distributor to maintain the integrity of the food.”
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