AUSTRALIAN officials have rejected misleading media reports alleging Australian beef exports to the US are to blame for a crippling food safety outbreak at Mexican fast-food retail chain Chipotle.

click here to view Chipotle article

Chipotle has radically overhauled its food safety practices and standards after the bacterial disease E.coli struck-down customers in various restaurants throughout the US last year.

The company’s share price plunged from an all-time high of US$760 last August to US$460 this week while social media has also been used by customers to frequently ventilate concerns over the food safety disaster.

In an apology statement, Chipotle Chair and founder Steve Ells said the E.coli outbreak that sickened 52 people - and a norovirus outbreak that claimed 140 victims at a single Chipotle restaurant in Boston - “have shown us that we need to do better, much better”.

“The fact that anyone has become ill eating at Chipotle is completely unacceptable to me and I am deeply sorry,” he said.

But the incident escalated after recent media reports - alleging the E. coli outbreak was most likely linked to Australian beef - incited official rejection from Australian authorities this week.

The reporting is understood to have been sparked by unattributed comments from a source inside Chipotle, quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal article.

But the allegations contradict the US Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) formal investigation which concluded no link existed between the disease outbreak and any of the fast food chain’s 64 ingredients.

A spokesperson for the Federal Department of Agriculture and Water Resources cited the CDC report to say there was no evidence linking Australian beef exports with the recent cases of food borne illness, associated with Chipotle.

The spokesperson said Australia had no US port of entry detections of bacterial contamination (E.coli), in about 491 million kilograms of beef exported in 2014 and 547 million kilograms of beef exported up until December 2015.

Source:  Farm Weekly - 8th February 2016