An outbreak of shigellosis food poisoning has been associated with eating at Zov’s Restaurant in Irvine, CA. The 4 people sickened ate at the restaurant from September 16-22.
“Shigellosis is a gastrointestinal illness that is caused by ingesting Shigella bacteria,” said Fred Pritzker, a national food safety lawyer who represents food poisoning victims. “When a restaurant is associated with a shigellosis outbreak, the source is either a sick food handler or a specific food product that was contaminated at some point in the food chain, often during processing. For example, we recently settled cases for clients who were sickened by sprouts. The sprouts had been contaminated during processing and then distributed to a restaurant. The restaurant put the raw sprouts on sandwiches, and several people got sick.”
The Orange County Heath Department has stated whether a specific food product was responsible for the Zov’s Restaurant outbreak.
In August, another shigellosis outbreak in Orange County was associated with another restaurant, True Food Kitchen in Newport Beach. In that outbreak, 8 people were sickened. They had eaten at the restaurant from August 21-25. had This is the second shigella-related food outbreak to hit an Orange County restaurant in less than five weeks and the third in less than a year, health officials confirm.
In February of this year, a shigellosis outbreak was associated with yet another Orange County restaurant, Greenleaf Gourmet Chopshop on 17th Street in Costa Mesa.
Shigella can cause severe illness from a complication called Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome, a severe form of acute kidney injury that often develops into kidney failure (renal failure). In addition, a small percentage of people become septic when the infection spreads via the bloodstream throughout the body. This is called sepsis or septicemia.
For more information, read “Can I Sue a Restaurant for Food Poisoning?“