Food and Drug Administration - FDA and CDC fail to find E. coli in green onions

Posted by Draving on 12/12/06 in General News

The doctors said they have not yet identified a specific cause of the outbreak, nor have they ruled out any food as the cause, including green onions. They also said there have been no new reports of the illness over the past few days. As of noon Eastern time Monday, 64 people had fallen ill in five states, according to the CDC; 82% of them had been hospitalized and 13% of them developed kidney failure. No deaths have been reported.

Doctors for the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said late Monday they have been unable to confirm preliminary reports of E. coli in green onions at Taco Bell, reports that have been linked to dozens of illnesses in the Northeast and elsewhere.

The FDA and CDC doctors said at a news conference that they had obtained some of the samples from the lab that Taco Bell had used to see if they could confirm the presence of E. coli. "All of those samples have been negative," David Acheson, chief medical officer at the FDA’s center for food safety and applied nutrition, said.

The FDA said an open bin of white onions has tested positive for bacteria. But the FDA and Centers for Disease Control have indicated that no illnesses have been linked to the strain found in the white onions, according to Taco Bell.

In a statement Monday evening, Taco Bell said it recently took the precaution of changing its supplier for produce, including white onions, to Taylor Farms in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Greg Creed, Taco Bell president, added: "The majority of the restaurants that we voluntarily closed have been reopened to serve our customers, and we are working quickly to reopen the few restaurants that remain closed."

Earlier Monday, McLane Foodservice Inc., the distributor to the Taco Bell restaurants linked to the E. coli outbreak, said the New Jersey Department of Health and Environmental Services found no evidence of improper storage or handling practices by the company during a site investigation.

The outbreak is the latest in a recent string of food contamination cases.

Back in September, E. coli bacteria in raw spinach sickened hundreds of people and killed three. In October of last year, people were sickened by certain varieties of packaged Dole salad mixes and in November 2003 green onions consumed at a Chi-Chi’s Mexican restaurant in western Pennsylvania were linked to hepatitis A.

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