Restaurants battle wave of food-borne illness

Three years ago, an ambulance rushed Richard Miller to the hospital, where he had an emergency liver transplant after contracting Hepatitis A from a special dinner platter at Chi-Chi’s restaurant in Beaver, Pa. So the recent food illness outbreaks at Taco Bell, Taco John’s and Olive Garden restaurants hit him hard.

"It’s sort of like, 'Oh no, not again,'" said Miller, 60. "There needs to be more regulation of the food supply."

Some 76 million people get sick from food-borne illnesses each year, and about 5,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That said, the nation's 935,000 restaurants are expected to serve 70 billion meals this year, according to the National Restaurant Association, and outbreaks for most major food-borne illnesses have declined by an average of 40 percent between 1996 and 2005 — with a few exceptions.

Vibrio infections, caused by contaminated raw or undercooked shellfish such as oysters, clams, mussels or crabs, climbed 41 percent. Restaurants say they've invested millions of dollars into systems and training to ensure food is safe.

"It's something they take very seriously, and they realize this is a tremendous responsibility," said Donna Garren, vice president of health, safety and regulatory affairs for the National Restaurant Association.

The organization offers training and certification on food safety, and this fall, on the heels of an outbreak of spinach-related E. coli, it created a new produce safety group that will come up with safety requirements in farming, harvesting, manufacturing, packing and processing fresh fruit and vegetables.

“It’s definitely top of mind,” said Boyd Hoback, president of Good Times Restaurants, a Golden, Colo.-based burger chain with 49 restaurants. The chain has employed aggressive food safety systems and training for workers and hires a third-party laboratory to regularly test food samples.

Good Times has not had a food-borne illness outbreak in its 20-year history, and Hoback knows that if the chain did, it “could absolutely kill our business.”

Taco Bell, which saw 71 people sickened this month due to E. coli bacteria in lettuce, is among the chains hoping to regain consumer confidence. The company has taken out full-page ads in major newspapers and launched a TV campaign in which Taco Bell President Greg Creed outlines the company's commitment to food safety.

The chain has stepped up its inspections of food, doubled its rate of testing for ingredients, created a toll-free line for consumers and hired a food safety specialist to help with inspections and to coordinate larger industry discussions.

"We're all in this together," said Will Bortz, a Taco Bell spokesman. "Let's figure out how to address a fix for it."

Olive Garden applied a special cleaning agent to sanitize its Indianapolis-area restaurant following an outbreak of norovirus last week that sickened about 370 people. The restaurant reopened Tuesday. Olive Garden spokesman Steve Coe said health officials do not know and may never know the exact genesis of the outbreak. Norovirus is a highly contagious virus, often seen on cruise ships, that generally is passed through the hands rather than through the food supply.

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