CASTLETON, Ind. -- Just as one foodservice crisis appeared to be running its course, another cropped up to take its place.Late last week, the U.S. Centers of Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) said that the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to Taco Bell restaurants in the Northeast appeared to be over, although it said more cases from the outbreak period could still be identified.
Based on a number of factors, iceberg lettuce is considered overall to be the single most likely source of the outbreak [image-nocss] at this time.The FDA said it continues to narrow its investigation by focusing its efforts on finding the sources of shredded iceberg lettuce served at the restaurants.
The peak of the outbreak occurred from the last week of November until the beginning of December. No new cases have been reported as of Dec. 14, 2006.A total of 71 cases in five states have been reported to the CDC: Delaware (twocases), New Jersey (33 cases), New York (22 cases), Pennsylvania (13 cases) and South Carolina (one case, of a person who ate at a Taco Bell in Pennsylvania); 53 hospitalizations and eight cases of Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS) have been reported.
The FDA said its investigators continue to expedite review of Taco Bell's records in order to trace the distribution channels of the iceberg lettuce and identify the farm or farms where the lettuce was grown, as well as all firms and facilities that handled the product.
The agency is aware of the outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 at Taco John's restaurants in Iowa and Minnesota, and is monitoring these closely in cooperation with state health authorities.Based on genetic fingerprinting of the E.coli, these outbreaks do not appear at this time to be related to the Taco Bell outbreak.
Meanwhile, more than 250 people have reported becoming sick after eating at an Olive Garden restaurant in Indianapolis, a county health official said on Friday, according to a Reuters report.
The news makes Olive Garden at least the third U.S. restaurant chain this month to be linked to widespread customer illnesses and those scares followed a high-profile outbreak of E. coli earlier this year, linked to spinach, that killed three people and sickened 200 others.
Some customers who ate at the Olive Garden restaurant in northeast Indianapolis between December 9 and December 13 have reported nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and in some cases fever, John Althardt, a spokesperson for the Marion County Health Department, told Reuters. Three of those people have been hospitalized.
A spokesperson for Olive Garden, which is owned by Orlando, Fla.-based Darden Restaurants Inc., told Reuters that the company was in the process of closing the affected restaurant to help health officials investigate the source of the illnesses. "The primary focus of the health department is on some employees that have been exhibiting flu-like symptoms," said Olive Garden spokesman Steve Coe.
An Olive Garden's press statement reads in full: We are working closely with the local health department in Castleton, Ind., to try to identify the source of this reported illness and will temporarily close the restaurant to give the health department a better opportunity to investigate this matter that may be tied to employees that recently had flu-like symptoms. This is an isolated incident. There have been no related incidents reported at any other Olive Garden in the market or elsewhere.
Coe added that the restaurant had also been sanitized twice and that appropriate food safety practices had been reinforced with its staff.
At least six employees at the restaurant have also reported being sick in the last week, although Althardt said those illnesses may not be related to the patrons' sicknesses.
An FDA spokesperson, Julie Zawisza, told Reuters that she had no information on the illnesses linked to Olive Garden.
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