A 61-year-old Wisconsin man claimed that he became ill after consuming the hamburger with onions that he claimed he had not ordered, which was one of the first reports to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that would eventually result in a recall of McDonald’s Quarter Pounders in many states.
According to the patient report dated October 21, “The patient stated that he ordered the Quarter Pounder without onions and was upset when it arrived with them on it.” According to the complaint, on September 29, while on stopover at a Colorado airport, the man consumed the burger, including the onions.
A subsequent test revealed that he had E. coli O157:H7, a particularly noxious type of the bacterium that can lead to serious renal issues.
According to another account, a 76-year-old Colorado lady became ill on October 5 and required hospitalization. She claimed to have had a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder, fries, and an Egg McMuffin. She claimed to have had fish and rice and a Caesar salad at different eateries on another day. Additionally, she tested positive for the strain of E. coli.
And according to his patient report, on September 29, a 16-year-old kid from Colorado who said he ate at McDonald’s “most days and typically orders a Quarter Pounder or cheeseburger at each meal” became ill with E. coli O157:H7.
At McDonald’s, the teenager claimed to have also taken a “Dr. Pepper, milk shake, bite of McChicken.” A “bbq sandwich and fries” at a different restaurant on a different day.
Through a Freedom of Information Act request, NBC News received the reports and 80 others. As the CDC looked into an expanding E. coli epidemic that it would later trace to slivered onions supplied on McDonald’s Quarter Pounders in 14 states and linked to 104 illnesses, including one fatality, they cover almost all of the reports the agency received.
Health care professionals and state health officials that were looking into foodborne disease outbreaks in their states sent reports to the CDC, which deleted any personal information.
McDonald’s temporarily stopped supplying its Quarter Pounders in a number of states as a result of the incident. In reaction to the epidemic, a Colorado onion supplier pulled its yellow onions at the same time.
The CDC announced the epidemic was finished on Tuesday. Since October 21, no additional instances have been found.
According to a statement released by the FDA on its website on November 14, “there does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak at McDonald’s restaurants,” a McDonald’s representative directed NBC News to.
The FDA and CDC performed “a good job” controlling the McDonald’s epidemic, according to Ben Chapman, a food safety specialist and director of agriculture and human sciences at North Carolina State University. He also noted that they moved “very quickly” to identify a product early and connect it to the Quarter Pounders.
“After they determined that onions were the most likely source, they informed the public,” he added. “That was really beneficial, in my opinion, and everything seemed to go rather quickly.”
The CDC records that were given to NBC News give an insight into the investigative work that was done as the agency’s investigators and state health authorities rushed to find the reason and contain the outbreak.
“Many sick people”
Colorado health authorities notified CDC of an uptick in E. coli illnesses in the state on October 10, according to Matt Wise, chief of the CDC’s Outbreak Response and Prevention Branch.
According to Wise, the health professionals provided the first important hint. He said that at that time, “they were noticing that many sick people were reporting eating at McDonald’s.”
That data came from patient interviews conducted by Colorado state and local health officials. He stated, “They’ll inquire about food, where people eat, and other things.”
According to Wise, the CDC received DNA findings from Colorado five days later on October 15 that demonstrated a connection between the diseases. According to him, the CDC launched a multistate inquiry once the results verified that diseases existed in other states.
The CDC then collaborated with Colorado to create a more thorough survey that would be given to suspected patients.
The survey inquired about the items they recalled consuming, if they substituted meals from restaurants, and whether their meals had pickles, tomatoes, lettuce, or onions. Additionally, it inquired as to whether they had eaten the Quarter Pounder—with or without onions—at McDonald’s.
Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, described identifying the underlying cause of a foodborne disease epidemic as “really tough and very difficult work.”
“They have to ask everyone what they ate, so it’s really, really hard to figure it out,” she remarked. Who can recall what they consumed? No one does.
Not everyone recalled consuming a Quarter Pounder, even though every report included verified cases in the epidemic. A 20-year-old Utah man who frequented McDonald’s and other eateries reported eating “Veggie pizza (veggie lover? Ultimate veggie pizza?)” and seven other recent meals, such as “Bowl with chicken and onion” and “chicken biscuit breakfast sandwich,” but he did not include a Quarter Pounder.
The CDC was working with McDonald’s at the same time as it was distributing questionnaires and collaborating with state health officials. The first time the CDC called the restaurant chain was on October 16.
Wise stated, “On Saturday, the 19th, we really kind of buttoned down that there was a specific association with Quarter Pounders.”
Onions, sliced
On October 22, the CDC declared the epidemic. There were ten states and forty-nine cases at that time. One person had died and ten others, including a toddler, had been hospitalized.
McDonald’s said the same day that it was removing its quarter-pound beef patties, which are only available on the Quarter Pounders, from its menus in the states that were impacted. The company that provided the sliced onions, Taylor Farms, also said that its yellow onions that were shipped to McDonald’s and other eateries were being recalled.
Health experts ruled out the Quarter Pounders’ beef patties as a possible source of E. coli on October 28.
The meat is the least probable option since it is cooked, and since food safety regulations were implemented in the 1990s, there have been far fewer meat-related illnesses, according to Nestle. Therefore, it’s most likely some sort of vegetable. Which ones, then, is the question.
Only a handful of substances remained as potential sources. It wasn’t the pickles, lettuce, or tomatoes because they were provided on other McDonald’s menu items, and the only thing making people sick was the Quarter Pounder, not the Big Mac or the traditional hamburger, which can also include pickles, lettuce, or tomatoes.
The likely source was then the fresh, sliced onions. Rehydrated chopped onions are used in other McDonald’s burgers and sandwiches.
The FDA and the CDC have both determined that the E. coli was most likely caused by sliced onions.
“After extensive testing by regulatory agencies and independent labs, no evidence of the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak strain has been found in any of our processed onion products, our onion raw product supply, or in our facility in Colorado,” said Rachel Molatore, a spokesperson for Taylor Farms, in a statement on Monday.
Although laboratory testing has not linked the recalled onions to the outbreak strain or symptoms, an FDA representative stated in a statement on Monday that the slivered onions “are the likely source of this outbreak.”
According to Nestle, the health authority might never be able to establish the onions as the source with certainty.
