45 sick: Health officials investigating Salmonella cases linked to Chipotle restaurants in Minnesota

Posted on September 12, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Must suck to be a Chipotle right now in the U.S.: About 100 customers and staff sick from Norovirus at a California oultlet, and now 45 sick with Salmonella linked to several Minnesota-area Chipotle’s.

Forty-five (45) cases of Salmonella Newport infection have been reported to the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) since Wednesday, Sept. 2. Since many cases of salmonellosis do not seek health care and get tested, the number of ill people that are part of this outbreak is likely to be larger than the identified number of cases. Consequently, health officials want to bring this outbreak to the attention of people who have become ill with symptoms of salmonellosis but who have not yet consulted a health care provider. These people should mention this outbreak to their health care provider should they consult one.

The investigation to date has found that the 45 cases were all infected with Salmonella Newport bacteria that have matching or very similar DNA fingerprints. Of the 34 people who have been interviewed to date, 32 ate or likely ate at 17 different Chipotle restaurant locations. Most of the restaurant locations are in the Twin Cities metro area, with one in St. Cloud and one in Rochester. Their meal dates range from Aug. 16 to Aug. 26 and they became ill between Aug. 20 and Aug. 29.

The Minnesota cases range in age from 15 to 67 years and are from eight metro and greater Minnesota counties; 56 percent are male. Five cases have been hospitalized; all are recovering.

Investigators from MDH and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture are working on identifying a specific food item source of the outbreak; in the meantime, Chipotle has changed the source of the suspect produce item under investigation. Between Aug. 16 and Aug. 26, Chipotle served more than 560,000 customers in Minnesota and has taken every appropriate measure to ensure that it is safe to eat in its restaurants. Investigators are confident that ongoing transmission at Chipotle as part of this outbreak has ended.

98 sickened: Norovirus confirmed at Calif. Chipotle

Posted on September 4, 2015 by Douglas Powell

An investigation by the Ventura County Environmental Health Division (EHD) revealed that during the week of August 18, 2015, about 80 restaurant customers and 18 restaurant employees reported symptoms characteristic of a gastrointestinal illness.

The restaurant, in conformance with its own corporate policy, voluntarily closed the facility, threw out all remaining food products, cleaned and disinfected the facility including all food contact surfaces, and excluded all employees with symptoms from working in the restaurant. EHD staff conducted an inspection the following day to confirm that the food had been removed, the restaurant was adequately disinfected, and the 18 employees had been excluded from work.

As part of the investigation the EHD and Public Health staff interviewed affected customers and restaurant staff to determine when the illness began and what had been eaten. The EHD also ordered that all affected restaurant employees submit specimens for laboratory analysis in an attempt to determine the cause of the illnesses. As of Sep. 3, 2015, 7-out-of-18 samples tested positive for Norovirus. The employees with positive test results will continue to be excluded from the restaurant until subsequent laboratory analysis results are negative for the virus and the Public Health Division has cleared them to return to work. There have been no further reports of illness since the initial reports two weeks ago.

77 sick at Calif. Chipotle

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Ventura County health officials say at least 60 customers reported feeling sick after eating at a Chipotle restaurant in Simi Valley last week.

It’s unclear what made the customers ill – test results were pending Monday.

Mike Byrne, food safety supervisor for the Ventura County Environmental Health Division, said the restaurant also sent home 17 employees for being sick, closed the business to clean it for a day and brought in new food before reopening.

Health officials inspected the restaurant at 1263 Simi Town Center Way on Monday.

NBC4 reviewed the restaurant’s health inspection reports on the Environmental Health Division website. Violations posted Monday included:

The premises and/or floors, walls, or ceiling are in an unsanitary condition.

Equipment or utensils are not clean, fully operative and in good repair.

Flying insects observed within the food facility.

Food handlers employed at this facility do not possess a valid food handler card and/or records documenting that food employees possess a valid food handler card are not maintained by the food facility for review as required.

The restroom is unclean or in disrepair.

NBC4 found the restaurant has repeated violations for some of the same issues dating back to January 2015.

Despite the findings, health officials said the Simi Valley Chipotle passed Monday’s inspection and found no major violations.

In a statement to NBC4, Chipotle said: “The safety and well being of our customers is always our highest priority. When we were contacted by customers who reported feeling poorly after visiting our restaurant in Simi Valley, we notified health department officials, immediately began a review of the incident, and have taken all of the necessary steps to ensure that it is safe to eat there.”

Chipotle near Columbia University closed by NYC department of health

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Chipotle and Whole Foods both have a track record of bad food safety and BS public relations.

Sure I’d indulge my pregnant wife six years ago in Kansas and go on late night Chipotle runs – because it was close and I wasn’t pregnant, she was – but I’d never eat there.

Those companies sure know how to extract a buck.

The New York City Health Department closed the Chipotle at Broadway and West 111th Street this week, with the fast-food outpost not expected to open again until Friday, staff said.

The department slapped the eatery with violations for improper refrigeration and evidence of flies, after inspectors visited the restaurant Monday to find its walk-in refrigerator had broken down that same day, employees and DOH officials said.

A staffer, who declined to give her name, said she didn’t expect it to be up and running again until Friday.

The Health Department found cold food being stored above the required 41 degrees, insufficient refrigeration equipment and no means of evaluating the temperature of foods during “cooking, cooling, reheating and holding,” according to its report.

It also found evidence of flies in the food and “non-food areas,” and that the facility was not sufficiently vermin-proof.

Food was also found to be “adulterated, contaminated, cross-contaminated, or not discarded [properly],” the department said.

Chipotle must pass a second inspection in order to reopen, and a health department spokesman could not immediately say when it was scheduled.

Don’t change diapers in the dining room or kitchen

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Ben Chapman

As a dad of a couple of messy boys, I’ve changed diapers in weird situations: in parking lots, hockey arena restrooms, on a plane. But never on the table in a fast food restaurant.

According to Gawker and Consumerist coverage, Chad, a dad in the midwest, ripped off a nasty letter to Chipotle (who got it right) after a manager asked him and his wife to stop changing their son’s diaper on a table in the dining area.

Chad, the dad in this incident, admitted in his letter that changing a diaper in a place where people eat is “unsavory,” but he still feels the Chipotle staff showed an “inability/unwillingness to empathize with parents who find [the car] a less convenient alternative even on a beautiful day like yesterday, much less a subfreezing day as we undoubtedly will have in [this region] this winter.”

Typical Chad.

He went on to say that the employees’ horrified reaction toward a dirty diaper on a table—where, again, human beings typically consume food—tipped him off that they must not have kids of their own. If they don’t install changing tables, he says, he’ll be taking his business (and his baby’s business, obviously) to Qdoba.Hard to say which fast-food Mexican chain he’s actually threatening with that one.

A rep for the company sent this rather reasonable response to the complaining father:

I can completely understand that it’s a hassle to find a way to change your daughter, and agree, that there are simply no alternatives as convenient as an actual changing table. We are currently in the process of retrofitting locations with changing tables, but I understand that this is not a very timely solution. … As you can understand it might be disconcerting for other customers to see a child getting changed directly on the tables, and we want to provide all of our customers with an exceptional experience.

Yeah, and kids diapers can leave pathogens all over the tables. Which may not be getting a clean/sanitize between customers. A 2007 outbreak of foodborne illness, leading to 4 hospitalizations, was linked to an employee changing the diaper of a diarrhea-stricken toddler in the kitchen of a Maryland Chuck E. Cheese.

Chipotle still sucks at food safety

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Douglas Powell

A Chipotle restaurant in Gwinnett County, Georgia, has failed its health inspection.

The restaurant, located at 860 Macon Highway in Lawrenceville, scored 60 out of 100.

The Gwinnett County health inspector noted that employees handling food at the restaurant were not washing their hands frequently enough to prevent contamination of food.

Other violations included:

Chicken not cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit or above
Dining counters and tables not cleaned and sanitized by correct methods
Held potentially hazardous foods not maintained below 41 degrees Fahrenheit

Channel 2’s Carol Sbarge visited the packed restaurant where one customer said he wouldn’t have come if he knew the score.

“It’s very upsetting. I didn’t go to another restaurant because they had a low score. Now that I know that they had that 60, I’m (not) even going to come here. I had no idea,” said customer Steve Sessa.

The restaurant was still posting an old score of 90, which is a violation.

http://www.wsbtv.com/videos/news/gwinnett-chipotle-fails-health-inspection/vCtD5K/

Chipotle, repeat sanctimonious violator

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Douglas Powell

I don’t tire of trashing Chipotle, because sanctimonious, self-centered assholes deserve to be called out.

Erin Van der Bellen and Russ Ptacek report for WUSA that health inspectors temporarily closed: Chiptole, 13501 Connecticut Avenue, Aspen Hill, Md. and Karen’s Deli, 1700 Research Blvd., Rockville, Md.

They all passed re-inspection and are back in business.

In July 2013, health inspectors closed Chiptole on Connecticut Avenue in Aspen Hill after the agency got a complaint from a customer who stated “….there was a dead roach in food…” and “no hot water provided at all sinks.”

Chipotle is now sourcing beef from Australia; guess that’s sustainable.

Ruth Reichl writes in the New York Times that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration fails on food, but that “an increasing number of major food companies, including Whole Foods, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle, Applegate and Panera Bread, have gotten on board, proof that as we vote with our wallets and our roasting pans, producers will rise to meet us.”

Market food safety at retail, rather than nonsense.

Sneeze guard? I don’t need no stinkin sneeze guard. Obama lunches at Chipotle

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Douglas Powell

I still don’t like Chipotle and their fatuous claims on food safety. There was a period during Amy’s pregnancy five years ago when I held my nose and went there because Amy was pregnant and had cravings.

On Monday, U.S. President Obama swung by a D.C. Chipotle for lunch.

“It had been awhile since I had the burrito bowl,” Obama told attendees at the White House Summit on Working Families. “It was good.”

Except the Prez committed a severe breach in dining etiquette on Monday when he overeagerly pointed at the ingredients he wanted in his burrito bowl—extending his entire forearm into no-man’s land.

Backlash against Barack’s bad manners flooded Twitter almost instantaneously.

What have the Romans ever done for us? Sanctimonious Super Bowl adverts

Posted on January 28, 2014 by Douglas Powell

Chobani yogurt suffered some serious quality issues in Aug. 2013, and persistent consumer complaints has led the company to respond to declining sales with a full public accounting of quality control measures with a Super Bowl ad.

On Feb. 2, when Fox broadcasts Super Bowl XLVIII, two brands of Greek-style yogurt, Chobani and Dannon Oikos, have bought commercial time in the game.

A 60-second Chobani commercial — in the first Super Bowl appearance for the No. 1 brand of Greek yogurt — is scheduled for the third quarter. The spot, featuring a new theme, “How matters,” is the start of a multimedia campaign that includes ads in digital and social media, events and a public relations effort. The “How matters” campaign is to continue after the Super Bowl with elements like commercials during the Winter Olympics and the Academy Awards.

What Chobani believes it offers is summarized by an announcer’s declaration: “A cup of yogurt won’t change the world. But how we make it might.”

Especially if it has mold that makes people barf.

Post-Super Bowl, Chipotle Mexican Grill will release “Farmed and Dangerous,” a four-part comedy series on the TV-streaming service Hulu that takes a satirical look at industrial-scale farming.

“Farmed and Dangerous,” billed as a “Chipotle original series,” hopes to promote the company’s concerns about sustainable agriculture and the humane treatment of animals used for meat. This stealth marketing strategy, Chipotle executives say, is not about “product integration,” but “values integration.”

Food safety would be an important value.

Chipotle, thy name is hypocrisy: misses the microbiological mark again

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Douglas Powell

I’ve never been a Chipotle fan. Amy got a hankering for the stuff when she was pregnant, which I ascribed to something like a pickle yearning.

Now the hackey-sack burrito-eating hipsters that South Park so effectively slammed four years ago are hitting out at factory farming and big food – except Chipotle is big food.

But, the chain – and it is a chain, with more than 1500 storefronts and $800 million in revenue last year — never misses a chance to appropriate a trend.

According to The Atlantic, last week Chipotle released an animated short as a marketing campaign. Sites like The New York Times, NPR, Slate, etc., posted the video, most with glowing endorsements (Bruce Horovitz at USA Today: “Chipotle is about to turn the ad world on its head“; Peter Weber at The Week: “It is the most beautiful, haunting infomercial you’ll ever see”; Carey Polis at The Huffington Post: “Chipotle Scarecrow Ad Will Make You Feel All the Feelings“; Neetzan Zimmerman atGawker: “All other ads should just give up.”)

Local food, GMO-free, no antibiotics, animal welfare friendly, it’s all there.

But Chipotle misses the microbiological mark.

Chipotle, tell consumers what you are, not what you aren’t. Microbiologically speaking.

The video is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUtnas5ScSE.

I prefer this one, from Funny or Die, and available at http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/da66b8f1aa/honest-scarecrow.

Honest Scarecrow – watch more funny videos

barfblog

safe food from farm to fork

Tag Archives: Chipotle