Taco Bell lastest victim of O157 strain of E. Coli

Reports of Illness Spread as Searchers Zero In on E. Coli Source


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By KEN BELSON and RONALD SMOTHERS
Published: December 8, 2006

Even as health officials and food distributors zeroed in yesterday on a California farm as the source of the contaminated green onions that have sickened Taco Bell customers, the E. coli outbreak widened considerably, with cases reported for the first time in New York City, Delaware, South Carolina and Utah.

In all, the number of cases that have been reported ballooned, to at least 169 yesterday, with most concentrated on Long Island and in New Jersey.

In New York, health officials said they were investigating 103 confirmed or suspected cases in 10 counties, up from 49 on Wednesday.

In New Jersey, 12 new cases were reported, bringing the total to 55. There were no new cases reported in Pennsylvania, where seven people have been sickened thus far. In Delaware, one case was confirmed and another was suspected. According to federal health officials, “the vast majority of patients reported eating” at a Taco Bell.

As the list of those sickened by a dangerous strain of E. coli called 0157:H7 grew, the focus of the outbreak turned to Boskovich Farms in Oxnard, Calif., which grows the green onions, also known as scallions, for the supplier of Taco Bell.

For now, the outbreak has led Taco Bell to remove the green onions from its 5,800 restaurants nationwide while the company and health officials try to determine where along the supply chain the bacteria spread.

“We’re focused on working with the authorities to find the root cause,” said Rob Poetsch, a spokesman for Yum! Foods, which owns Taco Bell.

Laboratory tests performed yesterday by the New York State Health Department in Albany showed that the same virulent strain of the bacteria — which can lead to bloody diarrhea, anemia and, in some cases, kidney failure — was present in patients who ate at restaurants on Long Island, in Clinton County in upstate New York and in Delaware.

But for now, the foremost question was where the problem started. It is still unclear whether the green onions were contaminated at Boskovich Farms in California, where they were grown; at the Ready Pac Produce plant in Florence, N.J., where they were cut, washed and sanitized; or at the huge warehouse of McLane Foodservice in Burlington Township, N.J., which then distributed the vegetables and other ingredients to the Taco Bell outlets in eight Northeastern states.

Boskovich, which began growing green onions on its farms 40 years ago, provided the green onions that led to a hepatitis outbreak that began at a Chi-Chi’s restaurant in Pennsylvania in 2003.

As the investigation into the outbreak continued, the family of an 11-year-old Long Island boy who became ill after eating at a Taco Bell in Riverhead on Nov. 24 filed a lawsuit against Taco Bell in State Supreme Court in Riverhead on Wednesday seeking an undisclosed sum for damages.

The boy, Tyler Vormittag, of Medford, was hospitalized on Nov. 28 after becoming dehydrated and spitting up blood, according to the family’s lawyer, Andrew Siben. He was released from the hospital the next day.

“When you go to a restaurant and you order food, it is deemed fit for human consumption and free of any harmful substances,” Mr. Siben said. “We allege that Taco Bell breached that duty.”

Mr. Poetsch, the spokesman for Yum! Foods, said yesterday that he was not aware of the suit, nor did he know of any others being filed against the company.

But lawyers at the firm of Marler Clark in Seattle said it was considering filing a complaint on behalf of about a dozen people who also became ill after eating at Taco Bells in the New York area. The lawyers said they were awaiting the results of medical tests.

As the number of cases of E. coli continued to grow, so did complaints about oversight of the nation’s food supply

“Because we have more industrialized systems now where things are concentrated, we need more tracking of produce,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union, a consumer advocacy group. “You’ll continue to see these types of outbreaks until people start looking at the whole food chain to find out where this is happening.”

The pre-trimmed green onions produced by Boskovich travel by refrigerated truck over a couple of days to Ready Pac’s sprawling L-shaped vegetable processing plant in an industrial park in New Jersey, the sole location for the processing of green onions used in Taco Bells in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and parts of New York.

“Taco Bell is the only customer to whom we sell green onions from this plant,” said Steve Dickstein, a vice president for marketing at Ready Pac. “But it is less than 1 percent of our output at this plant.”

Mr. Dickstein said yesterday that the Food and Drug Administration had inspected the facility in mid-November and issued it a clean bill of health. But as a precaution, the company shut down the production line where the green onions are prepared.

Ordinarily, Mr. Dickstein said, the onions are placed on a conveyor belt, where they are washed in a solution containing chlorine to kill any contaminants.

He said that workers wear rubber gloves, rubber boots, head coverings and face masks when necessary. “There is no human skin contact allowed,” he said.

The onions are then rinsed with water as they move along the conveyor belt and pass through a series of mechanized blades that trim the onions to roughly quarter-inch squares for Taco Bell. They are then bathed again in the sanitizing liquid and rinsed with water before they are dried.

Once dried, the green onions are put in 24-ounce bags that are not airtight, but are stamped and coded to indicate their production run and expiration date. The coding, Mr. Dickstein said, lets the company trace products back to its origin from Boskovich.

Bags are then packed four to a carton and shipped to McLane distribution centers in Burlington, N.J., and Albany, he said, adding that workers never opened the boxes.

The boxes then travel in 48-foot refrigerated trailers to Taco Bell restaurants in the region, usually twice a week.

Contributing reporting were Cindy Chang, Anthony DePalma, Tina Kelley, Bruce Lambert and Andrew Martin.