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Chipotle updating food safety, practices program as E. coli investigations continue

Chipotle Mexican Grill is upgrading its food safety program to improve food safety and food handling practices in all locations and throughout its supply chain.

December 4, 2015

As federal health investigations continue regarding the E. coli incidents at Chipotle Mexican Grill locations across the country the restaurant is upgrading its food-safety program to improve food safety and food-handling practices in all locations and throughout its supply chain.

"While Chipotle's food safety practices were already well within industry norms, I was asked to design a more robust food safety program to ensure the highest level of safety and the best quality of all meals served at Chipotle," said Mansour Samadpour, Ph.D., CEO of IEH Laboratories and Consulting Group, in an announcement Friday. "I am happy to report that our proposed program was adopted in its entirety, without any modification. While it is never possible to completely eliminate all risk, this program eliminates or mitigates risk to a level near zero, and will establish Chipotle as the industry leader in this area."

The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are continuing to collect data regarding E. coli reports at 11 Chipotle locations in Washington and Oregon at the end of October. The CDC has stated more cases could be reported as more data from local and state health departments are provided to the agencies.

According to the announcement,Chipotle's enhanced food-safety program is the product of a comprehensive reassessment of its food-safety practices conducted with a laboratory that included a farm-to-fork assessment of each ingredient Chipotle uses with an eye toward establishing the highest standards for safety. Specifically, program components include:

• Implementing high-resolution testing of all fresh produce in which a series of DNA-based tests will ensure the quality and safety of ingredients before they are shipped to restaurants, a testing program that far exceeds requirements of state and federal regulatory agencies, as well as industry standards.
• Initiating end-of-shelf-life testing where ingredient samples will be tested to ensure that quality specifications are maintained throughout the shelf life of an ingredient.
• Pursuing continuous improvements throughout its supply chain using data from test results to enhance the ability to measure the performance of its vendors and suppliers.
• Enhancing internal training to ensure that all employees thoroughly understand the company's high standards for food safety and food handling.

The company stated no ingredients that are likely to have been connected to this incident remain in Chipotle's restaurants or in its supply system. No Chipotle employees have been identified as having E. coli since this incident began.

"When I opened the first Chipotle 22 years ago, I offered a focused menu of just a few things made with fresh ingredients and prepared using classic cooking techniques," Steve Ells, chairman and co-CEO of Chipotle, stated in the announcement. "We do the same thing today, even with nearly 2,000 restaurants, and we are working harder than ever to ensure that our food is safe and delicious."

According to the CDC, there are about 48 million cases of food-related illness in the U.S. annually, including 265,000 cases of E. coli.

Since this incident began, Chipotle stated it has continued to serve more than 1 million customers a day in its restaurants nationwide without incident.