As the Boise Co Op Salmonella Outbreak grows, the management, now facing Boise Co Op Lawsuits, seeks to regain public confidence. A spokesperson for the Boise Co Op, Mo Valko, has stated that the Boise Co Op is cooperating with the Central District Health Department in an attempt to clean the deli and to, hopefully, reopen this week. Valko added: “It’s been so hard to communicate with people and let them know that this was a result of something in our store. So we just want them to know that they can contact us. We want them to understand that we are continuing to work really closely with Central District Health to find the cause of this and make sure that this never happens again.” But is a very telling statement, Valko also appeared to acknowledge that internal cross contamination might have played a big role: “We see this as an opportunity to put as many safe practices in place as possible. We have made a couple of changes to the arrangements of the equipment in the back. We have added an additional hand-washing sink just to help with workflow and we will have color-coded cutting boards as well.” The failure of deli staff to properly wash their hands may have contributed to the pervasive infection, as could have using a single cutting board to cut turkey and vegetables, such as tomatoes or onions (all which tested positive for salmonella).
Whatever the cause, it is clear that the deli was not operating in such a way to prevent the contamination and spread of salmonella, given the pervasiveness of the contamination and the lengthy time in which the bacteria continued to contaminate food. “What we usually see,” says long time salmonella lawyer Ron Simon, “is a restaurant outbreak linked to one or two days, but here the salmonella appears to have infected a number of food items and the tainted food was served to the public for at least 10 days.” Ron Simon, who represents victims in the Boise Co Op outbreak, has seen these sorts of outbreaks before, and will be using the discovery process in Boise Co Op lawsuits to get as much information as he can as to how this salmonella outbreak occurred and, in agreement with Ms. Valko, make sure it never happens again.
