McDonald’s E. coli Update: More Cases Found, Beef Patties Return to Menus

Quarter Pounder beef patties will be returning to the McDonald’s locations that were affected by an E. coli outbreak, according to a statement from the fast-food chain on Sunday.

Since the outbreak was announced last Tuesday, 75 people in 13 states have gotten sick in relation to the outbreak, of whom 22 have been hospitalized and one man has died, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

E. coli (Escherichia coli) is a strain of bacteria in human and animal feces that can contaminate food, resulting in food poisoning symptoms such as diarrhea, vomiting, fever, abdominal pain, and more.

Those who became ill with E. coli infections consistently reported eating McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers, so these were removed from the menus of locations in Colorado, Kansas, Utah, Wyoming and portions of eight other states, on Tuesday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stated on its website that its investigators were “working to determine if the slivered onions or beef patties on Quarter Pounder burgers are the likely source of contamination.”

Cesar Piña, McDonald’s North America chief supply chain officer, in a message shared on the McDonald’s website on Sunday, said that the “issue appears to be contained to a particular ingredient and geography, and we remain very confident that any contaminated product related to this outbreak has been removed from our supply chain and is out of all McDonald’s restaurants.”

He added that the restaurant has “ruled out Quarter Pounder patties as the source” of the outbreak after “overlaying the CDC’s Epidemiological data with our Supply Chain traceback data.”

Quarter Pounders are expected to be available in all restaurants later this week, the statement confirmed, and sales of the hamburger will resume without slivered onions.

As of Sunday, the Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) announced that its laboratories “completed all beef testing” on Quarter Pounder patties, finding all lots and samples to be negative for E. coli.

In the same statement, it clarified that it had “no information suggesting onions grown in Colorado are linked to this outbreak.”

The FDA is continuing to investigate Taylor Farms’ Colorado Springs facility, which supplied yellow slivered onions to 900 McDonald’s locations in the states affected by the outbreak.

Taylor Farms launched its own recall of onions, among its customers other than McDonald’s, due to suspected E. coli contaminated last week.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s announced that it removed slivered onions from Taylor Farms’ Colorado Springs facility from its supply chain on October 22, and in a statement published on Sunday, confirmed that McDonald’s has decided to stop sourcing onions from this facility indefinitely.

Newsweek has reached out to the FDA, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the CDA, McDonald’s and Taylor Farms for comment via email.

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and Pizza Hut have both also removed onions in select menu items across the United States over concerns of E. coli contamination linked to this outbreak.

Food safety expert Natalie Stanton previously told Newsweek that the strain involved in this E. coli outbreak—E. coli O157—”is a particularly nasty strain” of the bug that could cause “very severe illness for people in vulnerable groups such as young children, babies and elderly people.”

However, the CDC has said that the public risk is now “very low” due to product actions taken by McDonald’s and Taylor Farms, and because the latest illness reported in connection with this incident started on October 10.

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