My mother, God rest her soul, loved Taco Bell tacos, and especially, Taco Bell Bean Burritos. Every Saturday for lunch while we were out on our weekly shopping trip, my husband or myself, whomever was driving, would usually stop at a Taco Bell for our customary Saturday lunch. After my mother was no longer mobile, and living in a convalescent hospital, I would continue to take her out one day a week during the week, and often I would stop at a Taco Bell so she could have her favorite Taco Bell bean burrito.
After eating lunch at different Taco Bells, on and off, for several years, the day came in the summer of 1992, when after eating what became my favorite bean burrito for lunch, at a Taco Bell in Sunnyvale, I got extremely ill. The illness didn't hit me right after eating. It was several hours later, after I was home when the vomiting started. I was ill enough to go see my doctor, and he thought that my illness might be salmonella poisoning, but since I was feeling better when I went to see him, he didn't do any tests. The illness passed in a couple of days, yet I still had that awful feeling in my stomach like I was going to 'turn' and vomit again. Ever since that day I got ill from eating at a Taco Bell, I haven't returned to eat at that restaurant chain. That was twenty years ago!
I read today, February 3, 2012 where the Los Angeles Times reported that the Taco Bell chain is being considered as the source in an outbreak of illness that has hit at least 68 people, over a two month span from October 2011 to November 2011, and these people ate at different Taco Bell restaurants, across ten states. Reading this made me think back to when I got ill back in the summer of 1992, and my doctor thought that it might have been a mild case of salmonella poisoning, if a case of salmonella can ever be thought of as mild! I got my food related illness after eating a bean burrito that had sour cream in it, and there was also some cheese in the burrito. We thought at the time that the salmonella could have been in either the sour cream or the cheese because both the cream and the cheese are cold foods that are added to already hot, heated beans and hot beef. The cold foods like sour cream and cheese are excellent 'mediums' for microbes like salmonella to grow in if these foods are not kept at temperatures cold enough to prevent the growth of microbs.
This evening I read in several online sources that last year, 2010, there was another outbreak of salmonella poisoning in ten states that involved 155 people, who ate at different Taco Bell Restaurants. No one seems to be able to pin point the exact cause or causes of these outbreaks of salmonella poisoning at various Taco Bells. Why are the outbreaks of salmonella happening in different restaurants in different states at the same time? My suggestion to the experts is to examine the cold food products that are in the tacos and burritos. Hot food items most likely will NOT be contaminated with salmonella because the heat used in cooking ground meat and beans, as long as it reaches 185 degrees should kill off microbes like salmonella.
My money is still on the cold sour cream or the cold cheese in the tacos and burritos as being possible carriers of the salmonella microbes that are making people ill. If cold food items like sour cream and cheese are not kept cold enough in both transit and storage, microbes will multiply, rapidly. Transport of the cream and cheese from the same batches of possiibly, already contaminated cream and cheese, in delivery trucks to their various restaurants across ten states seems a very likely scenario to have happened. In this case the delivery trucks may not meet the 'cold' standard to prevent the spread of microbs in the 'cold' foods being transported. I suggest that the refrigation unit(s) in the truck(s) used for this transport be checked out to insure that the correct temperature is maintained throughout interstate transport of the cold food products used at the restaurant(s).
Copyright © Carol Garnier Dutra
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