McDonald’s Reinstates Quarter Pounders After E. Coli Crisis

McDonald's Reinstates Quarter Pounders After E. Coli Crisis
McDonald's Reinstates Quarter Pounders After E. Coli Crisis. Credit | Getty images

United States: McDonald’s revealed Sunday that Quarter Pounders returned again to hundreds of restaurants after testing a beef patty negative as being the cause of the E. coli bacterial poison associated with the burgers that led to the death of one person and affected at least seventy-five others in 13 states.

More about the news

The US FDA still sticks to the view that slivered onions from one supplier probably have been the root cause of the contamination, according to McDonald’s.

It said it will start selling the Quarter Pounder in the outlets – minus slivered onions in the coming week, ABC News reported.

Illness left several sick and hospitalized

By Friday, the outbreak had escalated to at least 75 people ill in 13 states, according to federal health authorities.

Twenty-two people have been placed in hospital; two of them contracted a potentially fatal complication – a kidney disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There has been one fatality in the state of Colorado.

The agency said that according to the first data that became available at the FDA, uncooked slivered onions used on the burgers “are a likely source of contamination.”

McDonald’s has stated that the grower of the fresh onions was Taylor Farms, which was a supplier of the fresh onions, and it was sourced from a processing center at Colorado Springs in Colorado.

The company removed the Quarter Pounder burger from menus in several states – mainly the Midwestern and Mountain states – when the company declared the outbreak on Tuesday, ABC News reported.

What more did McDonalds state?

On Friday, McDonald’s stressed that it had supplied around 900 of its restaurants with slivered onions from the Colorado Springs plant, ideally some in key lifestyle centers, including airports.

The company stated that it had pulled slivered onions from that facility out of its supply chain on Tuesday. McDonald’s claimed it has effectively put a halt to the purchasing of onions from Taylor Farm’s Colorado Springs ‘indefinitely.’

As per the company, the Colorado Department of Agriculture denied that beef patties were the source of the outbreak.