E. Coli Outbreak Linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounders

cdc.gov

28 points·amichail··8 comments

McDonald's switched from frozen to fresh meat for the Quarter Pounders about 6 years ago. Maybe it's more surprising that they went this long without a processing problem. It's spread across multiple states so this isn't one employee making trouble.

Hopefully someone with more first-hand knowledge can chime in but I understand "fresh meat" in this context to be "dried like jerky until it's re-wetted at the restaurant". It's not exactly surprising to see they have few processing incidents. Makes me wonder what went wrong and how it relates to the food handling. Notably, they are also choosing not to serve slivered onions.

New reports are saying it wasn't the meat at all, but the onions. QPs use slivered fresh onions and not rehydrated chips.

I don't know where you got that idea of dried jerky, but absolutely not. Meat doesn't even work that way. At best you can rehydrate small freeze-dried cubes of beef, but it's nowhere near the same and vastly more expensive than fresh.

McD's QP is fresh ground beef exactly the same as sold at your supermarket. Other burgers are cooked from frozen, again no different from the frozen burgers sold at your supermarket.

Appreciate the correction. I also can’t say where I got that idea but it occurred to me nonetheless.

Maybe like Chipotles multiple E. Coli outbreaks: central fresh food processing that is then sent out

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