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Costco Wholesale

Costco chicken salad pulled over concerns it makes people sick

Trevor Hughes
USA TODAY
This kind of chicken salad has been pulled from Costco's shelves after at least 19 people got sick from an E. coli infection linked to the pre-made salad.

DENVER — An outbreak of E. coli infections that’s sickened at least 19 people across seven states has been tentatively linked to chicken salad sold at Costco stores.

Costco Wholesale has pulled the “chicken salad made with rotisserie chicken” from its shelves, and investigators are interviewing ill people and using DNA analysis to track the path. No deaths have been reported, the CDC said, but five people got so sick they had to be hospitalized, and two suffered kidney failure.

The E. coli bacteria linked to the outbreak produces the Shiga toxin, federal officials said. The outbreak comes on the heels of a larger outbreak that sickened dozens of people across the country after eating at Denver-based Chipotle Mexican Grill.

The Costco-connected outbreak has sickened consumers in Washington, California, Colorado, Montana, Utah, Missouri and Virginia, the CDC said. The majority of them ate the chicken salad in the week before they got sick, the CDC said.

Four of the people who got sick were in Colorado, and one was hospitalized.

Public-health officials said anyone who ate the chicken salad and is feeling ill should consult their health care provider.

More than 48 million people are sickened by the food they eat each year in the country, causing about 3,000 deaths and 125,000 hospitalizations, costing our economy $14.1 billion, the CDC says.

Salmonella is the leading cause of food-bourne illnesses and hospitalizations, usually traced to eggs, chicken and raw ground tuna. Listeria in recent years has caused the most deaths, largely due to an outbreak caused by contaminated cantaloupe in 2011 that killed 33 people, the CDC said.

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