Green onions suspected of sickening Taco Bell customers in six states have been traced to one of Ventura County's largest vegetable growers, but authorities said Thursday it was too early to blame anyone for the outbreak.
Taco Bell Corp. voluntarily removed green onions from its restaurants Wednesday after discovering that the "vast majority" of at least 58 people who suffered \o7E. coli \f7food poisoning in the last week, mostly in New Jersey and New York, had eaten at a Taco Bell, federal officials said Thursday. No one has died, but 48 people have been hospitalized with kidney failure or other problems caused by the bacteria.
Taco Bell said its preliminary testing had found a strain of \o7E. coli \f7in its green onions, although it is awaiting confirmation from more accurate tests.
"We have an initial indication that it is the green onions and we have tested everything in our restaurants," said Will Bortz, a spokesman for the Irvine-based fast-food chain, who added that "our investigation is still looking at lots of possible sources."
An official with Oxnard-based Boskovich Farms, which has been growing vegetables for nearly a century, said there was only a tentative link between the \o7E. coli \f7outbreak and the farm's produce.
Federal and state health officials said Thursday that it was premature to blame green onions, Boskovich Farms or the processor, Ready Pac Produce. They said there was no official evidence implicating any particular food.
Kevin Reilly, a deputy director of the California Department of Health Services, said Thursday that there was "no California connection ... based on the science at this point."
The presence of \o7E. coli \f7in Taco Bell's green onions "is not confirmed," Reilly said, adding that there are often false positives in preliminary \o7E. coli \f7tests.
Boskovich Farms is not under investigation, Reilly said.
Ready Pac Produce, based in Irwindale, double-washed, processed and packed the onions at its New Jersey plant. Ready Pac has tested the plant's produce and has not detected any \o7E. \f7\o7coli, \f7said Steve Dickstein, Ready Pac's vice president of marketing.
"We run a very clean operation," he said. "This could be a false positive."
If tests confirm that green onions are the source, it would be the second major food-poisoning epidemic in the last few months with reported links to California-grown produce. In September, about 200 people became sick and three died after eating spinach from the Salinas Valley contaminated with the same pathogen implicated at Taco Bell.
