McDonald’s scrambled on Wednesday to contain the damage from an E. coli outbreak linked to Quarter Pounder burgers that has killed one person and sickened nearly 50 others, as it pulled the menu item from restaurants across a dozen states.
The outbreak has sickened people across the U.S. West and Midwest, with 10 hospitalized due to serious complications, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is investigating the outbreak. A McDonald’s spokesperson said the outbreak is limited to the United States.
“We fully expect to see more cases,” said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner. “McDonald’s has moved rather quickly to take action to, hopefully, prevent as many cases as possible.”
Previous E. coli outbreaks at big U.S. fast-food chains have caused consumers to shun those chains for months. McDonald’s USA President Joe Erlinger on Wednesday said the fast-food chain needs to rebuild trust with the public after it pulled the item off its menu at a fifth of its 14,000 U.S. restaurants.
The company pulled the Quarter Pounder from its menu at McDonald’s locations in Colorado, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming, and in parts of Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
The CDC and McDonald’s are scrutinizing the Chicago-based company’s supplies of slivered onions and beef patties as they try to determine the cause of the outbreak, the company said.
The company’s stock closed down 5.1% at $298.57 after spokespeople added it had not yet ruled out the possibility of beef being part of the outbreak. Shares hit an intraday low of $290.88.
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‘VERY SERIOUS DISEASE’
The E. coli O157:H7 strain that led to the McDonald’s outbreak is the same as a strain linked to a 1993 incident at Jack in the Box that killed four children. It can cause “very serious disease,” especially for the elderly, children and people who are immunocompromised, said Shari Shea, director of food safety at the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
McDonald’s suppliers test their products frequently and did so in the date range the CDC gave for the outbreak, and none of them identified this E. coli strain, company spokespeople said.
U.S. food safety attorney Bill Marler, who represented a victim in the Jack in the Box outbreak, said this is a relatively large and serious outbreak for which McDonald’s will face “a lot” of liability for the contamination.