Chipotle Mexican Grill said on Thursday it might never pinpoint what caused an E. coli outbreak last month linked to two restaurants in Kansas and Oklahoma, extending a mystery over dozens of illnesses tied to the burrito chain. Chipotle no longer has any of the potentially contaminated ingredients that could be examined to determine the source of the infections, said a company spokesman, Chris Arnold.
Company and health officials investigating the outbreak have also cited the same hurdles to tracing the cause of a larger E. coli outbreak that has sickened at least 50 Chipotle customers in nine states since October. It is unclear whether the new cases are related to the larger outbreak that started in October, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Identifying a specific cause for the latest E. coli cases "really can be a challenge with the limited information that may be available from the few cases that occurred," said Laurence Burnsed, an epidemiologist for the Oklahoma State Department of Health.
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