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Several Customers Believed Sickened by Salmonella Poisoning at Mexican Restaurant

Kern County food safety inspectors have closed down a Mexican restaurant that is believed to be behind a Salmonella poisoning scare.  Don Perico Mexican and seafood restaurant in Bakersfield is believed to be the source of the salmonella food poisoning which has left four people sick.  At least two of the people have had to be hospitalized.

On Wednesday, Kern County food safety inspectors conducted an inspection of the restaurant, and the next day they decided to shut it down.  According to the inspectors, the inspection revealed multiple food safety violations.  Officials have taken samples of the food in the restaurant for testing of salmonella, and the restaurant is not expected to open until the testing results are out.

According to the Public Health Director, the department is likely to confirm more reports of salmonella illnesses connected to the restaurant over the next couple of days.  Health safety officials began investigating the four victims of salmonella poisoning, and when they tried to find a common link between these four victims, they zeroed in on the restaurant.  All four victims ate at Don Perico Mexican restaurant in the days before they fell sick.

As of now, there does not seem to be any link between this outbreak of salmonella food poisoning and the nationwide outbreak connected to salmonella-tainted eggs from two farms in Iowa.  Don Perico Mexican Mexican restaurant is not on the list of facilities in California that received eggs from those two facilities.

It’s not the first time that the Don Perico Mexican restaurant has been named in a food poisoning outbreak.  In June, Environmental Health officers received complaints about food poisoning caused by eating at the restaurant.  The latest inspection threw up several food safety violations at the facility, including those related to food handling.  The inspectors found two major violations.  One involved employees failing to wash hands before handling food, and the other involved an employee washing beer pitchers without using sanitizing liquid.  Besides, inspectors found that cutlery like spatulas and knives that were used on new food, were still covered with coating from the old food.  The cutlery was also coated with a yellow brown residue.  Dirty cleaning cloths were not dipped inside sanitizing liquid when not in use, and open containers of poultry, meat and seafood were placed in an under sink refrigerator.  However, none of these problems was considered serious enough to close down the restaurant.

This latest salmonella outbreak in California comes on the heels of a nationwide salmonella scare that has already left 1,500 people sick and California food poisoning attorneys very concerned.  The epidemic has been linked to two farms in Iowa, both of which have recalled more than half a billion eggs over the past month.    The Food and Drug Administration now has to explain the source of the outbreak, and why it took so long to get the two farms to recall the tainted eggs.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of food poisoning. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Reeves Law Group is not representing any party in the matters discussed in this posting.

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