A 61-year-old Wisconsin man claimed that he became ill after consuming a hamburger with onions that he had not ordered, which was one of the first reports to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that would eventually result in a McDonald’s Quarter Pounders recall in many states.
According to the Oct. 21 patient report, the patient was upset when the Quarter Pounder with onions arrived because he had ordered it without them. According to the complaint, on September 29, while on stopover at a Colorado airport, the man consumed the burger, including the onions.
A subsequent test revealed that he had E. coli O157:H7, a particularly noxious type of the bacteria that can lead to serious renal issues.
According to another account, a 76-year-old Colorado woman became ill on October 5 and required hospitalization. She claimed to have consumed a Quarter Pounder, fries, and an Egg McMuffin from McDonald’s. She claimed to have had fish and rice and a Caesar salad at different eateries on another day. Additionally, she tested positive for the strain of E. coli.
Additionally, according to his patient report, a 16-year-old boy from Colorado who claimed to eat at McDonald’s most days and usually gets a cheeseburger or Quarter Pounder at each meal became ill with E. coli O157:H7 on September 29. At McDonald’s, the teenager claimed to have also had a Dr. Pepper, a milk shake, and a piece of McChicken. Fries and a barbecue sandwich at another place on a separate day.
Through a Freedom of Information Act request, NBC News received the reports and 80 others. As the CDC investigated an expanding E. coli outbreak that it would later attribute to slivered onions supplied on McDonald’s Quarter Pounders in 14 states and linked to 104 illnesses, including one fatality, they cover almost all of the reports the agency received. Health care professionals and state health officials that were looking into foodborne illness outbreaks in their states sent reports to the CDC, which deleted any personal information.
McDonald’s temporarily stopped supplying its Quarter Pounders in a number of states as a result of the incident. In reaction to the epidemic, a Colorado onion supplier pulled its yellow onions at the same time.
The CDC proclaimed the outbreak to be over on Tuesday. Since October 21, no additional cases have been found.
An official from McDonald’s directed NBC News to a statement the company posted on its website on November 14th, stating that the FDA stated there does not seem to be a persistent food safety issue associated with this epidemic at McDonald’s locations.
The FDA and CDC handled the McDonald’s outbreak well, according to Ben Chapman, a food safety specialist and head of agricultural and human sciences at North Carolina State University. He also noted that they moved swiftly to identify a product early and connect it to the Quarter Pounders.
“After they determined that onions were the most likely source, they informed the public,” he said. That was really beneficial, in my opinion, and everything seemed to go rather quickly.
The CDC documents that were given to NBC News give an idea of the detective work that was done as the agency’s investigators and state health authorities rushed to find the reason and contain the outbreak.
A lot of ill people
Colorado health officials notified CDC of an uptick in E. coli illnesses in the state on October 10, according to Matt Wise, chief of the CDC’s Outbreak Response and Prevention Branch.
According to Wise, the health officials provided the first important hint. He claimed that at that time, they noticed that many sick patients were reporting eating at McDonald’s.
That data came from patient interviews conducted by Colorado state and local health officials. “They will inquire about food, where people eat, and other things,” he stated.
According to Wise, the CDC received DNA findings from Colorado five days later on October 15 that demonstrated a connection between the diseases. According to him, the CDC launched a multistate inquiry once the results verified that illnesses existed in other states.
The CDC then collaborated with Colorado to create a more thorough survey that would be given to suspected patients.
The survey inquired about the items they recalled consuming, whether they substituted meals from restaurants, and whether their meals had pickles, tomatoes, lettuce, or onions. Additionally, it inquired as to whether they had eaten the Quarter Pounder—with or without onions—at McDonald’s.
Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, stated that identifying the underlying cause of a foodborne illness outbreak is an extremely challenging task.
“They have to ask everyone what they ate, so it’s really, really hard to figure it out,” she remarked. Who can recall what they consumed? No one does.
Not everyone recalled consuming a Quarter Pounder, even though every report included confirmed cases in the outbreak. According to a report from a 20-year-old man from Utah who frequented McDonald’s and other restaurants, he had a bowl with chicken and onion and a chicken biscuit breakfast sandwich, among seven other recent meals. However, he did not include a quarter pounder on his list.
In addition to distributing questionnaires and collaborating with state health officials, the CDC was also engaging with McDonald’s. The first time the CDC called the restaurant chain was on October 16.
“On Saturday, the 19th, we really kind of buttoned down that there was a specific association with Quarter Pounders,” Wise stated.
Slivered onions
On October 22, the CDC declared the outbreak. There were ten states and forty-nine cases at that time. One person had died and ten others, including a toddler, had been hospitalized.
On the same day, McDonald’s announced that it was removing the quarter-pound beef patties that were only offered on Quarter Pounders from its menus in the states that were impacted. A recall of yellow onions sent to McDonald’s and other restaurants was also notified by Taylor Farms, the supplier of the sliced onions.
Health experts ruled out the Quarter Pounders’ beef patties as a possible source of E. coli on October 28.
The meat is the least likely option because it is cooked, and since food safety regulations were implemented in the 1990s, there have been significantly fewer meat-related outbreaks, according to Nestle. Therefore, it’s most likely some sort of vegetable. Which ones, then, is the question.
Only a handful of substances remained as potential sources. People were only becoming ill from the Quarter Pounder, not from the Big Mac or the traditional hamburger, which can also have pickles, lettuce, or tomatoes. This was because these ingredients were served on other McDonald’s menu items.
The likely source was then the fresh, sliced onions. Rehydrated diced onions are used in other McDonald’s burgers and sandwiches.
The FDA and the CDC have both determined that the E. coli was most likely caused by sliced onions.
Taylor Farms spokesperson Rachel Molatore said in a statement on Monday that no indication of the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak strain has been discovered in any of our processed onion products, our supply of raw onion products, or our Colorado facility following a thorough testing process by independent labs and regulatory bodies.
Despite the fact that laboratory testing has not linked the recalled onions to the outbreak strain or symptoms, an FDA representative stated in a statement on Monday that the slivered onions are the most likely cause of this outbreak.
According to Nestle, the health authority might never be able to establish the onions as the source with certainty.
She remarked, “That package of onions is long gone.”
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