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Exec: Taco Bell expects to reopen stores

BY REID J. EPSTEIN AND JAMES T. MADORE | Newsday Staff Writer

6:00 PM EST, December 5, 2006

Taco Bell expects to reopen restaurants on Tuesday that were closed after an E. coli strain sickened nearly three dozen people in New Jersey and Long Island, an executive for the chain's parent company said.

"We expect all Taco Bell restaurants to be back in operation today," Tim Jerzyk, a vice president at Yum Brands Inc. told the company's annual investor conference in New York.

He said the company has worked "around the clock" with health officials and "there is no immediate threat to consumers today."

"We're obviously very concerned to the effect of consumers, and will continue to work closely with health officials to get to the root cause," he said.

Meanwhile, the eight Taco Bell restaurants on Long Island and one in New Jersey that closed following the outbreak all used the same food distributor, and health officials said it may be to blame for the outbreak that has sickened dozens in both states.

Company officials in a statement insisted that the restaurants are not confirmed to be the source of the outbreak. A spokesman also said there was no evidence the distributor -- which brought food to all the affected restaurants -- was at its root, but said health officials weren't ruling that out.

Fourteen people on Long Island, including two 11-year-old boys, have fallen ill in a regional E.coli 0157 outbreak that's being traced to eight Taco Bell restaurants in Nassau and Suffolk along with other, undetermined sites.

Ten of the victims ate at Taco Bell between Nov. 20 and Nov. 25, according to Dr. Abby Greenberg, disease control director for the Nassau health department.

After being contacted over the weekend by Suffolk's health department, Taco Bell offered to shutter four locations there for several days so that they could be thoroughly cleaned and all food replaced, said Dr. Patricia Dillon, the Suffolk communicable disease director.

The company, Yum Brands, based in Louisville, Ky., also agreed to temporarily close four restaurants, in East Meadow, Hempstead, Hicksville and Garden City, for disinfection and discarding of all food, a spokesman for Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi said last night.

"We're not looking for people to panic and we're not looking to shut down the Taco Bell chain," Suozzi said. "We just want people to be careful."

Greg Creed, Taco Bell president said, "As soon as we learned of an E. coli issue, we immediately began working with state and county health officials."

He said the company is in the process of "sanitizing these isolated restaurants and replacing all the food ingredients."

In Suffolk, three of the 11 victims were still hospitalized Monday, and Dr. David G. Graham, the acting health commissioner, said nine of the victims were between ages 11 and 27; two others were in their 60s.

"There have been no deaths but we have some serious cases," Graham said.

One of Nassau's three victims, an 11-year-old Hempstead boy, remained hospitalized at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, officials said. Greenberg declined to elaborate about his condition, citing federal confidentiality laws. The other two Nassau victims are not hospitalized and did not eat at Taco Bell, she said.

One Suffolk victim ate at three Taco Bells -- at an undisclosed location in Suffolk, and in Nassau at the Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City and at the Broadway Mall in Hicksville, Greenberg said.

Suozzi said it is not yet clear if there is common thread to what the E.coli victims ate. "There's no way to know if it's lettuce or meat," he said.

It also was not clear whether the Long Island E.coli cases were related to E.coli cases linked to affected Taco Bell outlets in New Jersey announced Sunday. David A. Papi, the health director for Middlesex County, said seven people remained hospitalized and eight others were sickened across three counties there.

Graham said Taco Bell had been responsible and cooperated, voluntarily shutting down restaurants in Patchogue, Deer Park, Port Jefferson Station and Riverhead.

Graham said the Suffolk health department first became aware of the potential outbreak last week when the mother of an 11-year-old boy complained that he was ill and wondered if the culprit might be a gecko kept as a family pet. A hospital laboratory determined the boy had been infected with E.coli but couldn't determine the source. He had eaten at a Taco Bell, however.

Graham and others said an E. coli outbreak is relatively unusual and usually involves inadequately cooked ground beef, milk products, apple cider or vegetables such as salad, spinach and alfalfa sprouts. "It's a relatively rare phenomenon over the years," he said. "There is no need to be overly concerned or to panic."

Staff writer Christine Armario contributed to this story, which was supplemented with an Associated Press report.