A salmonella outbreak that has sickened dozens of people in Minnesota prompted Chipotle Mexican Grill to announce on Tuesday that it was pulling certain jalapeños from its restaurants.
In a statement, the company said “Chipotle has removed the suspect jalapeños across all of our restaurants where they had been distributed and replaced them with jalapeños from different growers.” It was unclear how many restaurants were affected and in which states.
Laurie Schalow, the chief corporate affairs and food safety officer for Chipotle, highlighted the company’s “robust ingredient traceability system,” and said in the statement that it had “proactively identified jalapeños as a potential common ingredient from a common lot.”
The Minnesota Department of Health said it had identified 110 salmonella cases in this outbreak — and 75 of those people had reported having eaten at Chipotle between June 14 and July 14.
Other cases reported in Minnesota pointed to possible salmonella from other Mexican-style restaurants. The Food and Drug Administration lists “Salmonella Javiana” as an active investigation, with a possible 200-plus cases. The F.D.A. has not issued a recall or released findings but said online that it had initiated sampling.
“It is too soon for us to know if the outbreak is ongoing,” Carlota Medus, a top official in the foodborne diseases unit in Minnesota’s health department, said in a statement. “Given the measures Chipotle put in place, we are not concerned about Chipotle; but it is possible that the outbreak is ongoing if the contaminated food item is being served elsewhere. We do expect the case count to increase even if the illnesses occurred a couple of weeks ago, since it takes us a while to detect cases in surveillance.”
Chipotle has worked for years to improve its reputation after coming under immense scrutiny during a 2015 e. coli outbreak, which dealt the company a significant financial blow. In 2016, Chipotle started new marketing campaigns aimed at winning back customers.
Chipotle restaurants in Minnesota were specifically affected by the e. coli outbreak. That time, tomatoes were identified as the culprit.
The salmonella outbreak is the latest this summer in the United States, and the latest to involve Mexican-style food. Taco Bell became the early face of a cyclospora outbreak, but its sales have been recovering. Its parent company, Yum Brands, said transparency around pulling affected lettuce from stores had helped Taco Bell regain consumer trust.
