Following the consumption of ground beef from the meal delivery firm HelloFresh, six persons were admitted to the hospital with E. coli.
The patients were questioned by state and municipal health authorities. They became unwell between June 8 and August 17. Before becoming unwell, every person whose story was heard said they had consumed ground beef from HelloFresh.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the patients and one other person who became unwell but did not need medical treatment were spread out throughout the nation in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington.
Ground beef should be thrown away by customers who frozen meat from HelloFresh boxes sent between July 2 and 21, according to a statement released on Saturday by the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). The business was not obligated to issue a recall since the product is no longer being sold.
According to genetic testing, the sick individuals had the E. coli strain O157:H7, which is often to blame for bowel sickness outbreaks. According to the CDC, stomach pains, vomiting, and bloody diarrhoea are all signs of an E. coli infection.
In 2019, the business recalled onions contaminated with Salmonella that were a part of a national epidemic at the time, according to food safety lawyer Bill Marler, who spoke to Insider. This is not the first time HelloFresh has been connected to a foodborne disease outbreak.
With these illnesses and the current investigation into Daily Harvest, Marler expressed the hope that the FDA and FSIS will pay more attention to the expanding home meal delivery business.
Customers should check their refrigerators for HelloFresh meat.
Past E. coli outbreaks have included ground beef, including the August Hawaii’s Big Island Beef public health warning and the spring recall of nearly 120,000 pounds of ground beef made in New Jersey.
FSIS investigators were able to pinpoint a particular manufacturing facility in the US as the outbreak’s origins. HelloFresh said that the alert “affects a very tiny number of HelloFresh consumers in the US” in a statement to the Washington Post.
Nevertheless, FSIS worries that some consumers could have unsold food in their freezers. The company issued a public health warning, advising HelloFresh customers to look out for 10-ounce vacuum-sealed packets of 85 percent-lean ground beef that may be marked “EST.46841.”
Food safety professionals generally advise consumers to only eat ground beef that has been cooked to an internal temperature of at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit, which is high enough to destroy the majority of hazardous germs.