Chipotle’s E. Coli Outbreak: contaminated food source not likely found says Schaffner
The first reports of E. coli sickening Chipotle customers were revealed in October. Three months and thousands of tests later, health investigators still can't find the source of the outbreak, which has since sickened 53 people in nine states.
Dr. William Schaffner, infectious-diseases specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center explained that most people who dine at Chipotle eat some combination of the same ingredients, so it becomes harder to determine which of those ingredients was contaminated.
"The more the menu is standardized — where everybody eats the same stuff — the more difficult it becomes to identify" what is making people sick, he said.