20 Years After Chi-Chi's Hepatitis A Outbreak: A look at its impact on food safety

CENTER TWP. ― A Hepatitis A outbreak traced to a Beaver County restaurant 20 years ago may have led to many of the national food safety guidelines implemented in the last several years.

In 2003, Chi-Chi's, a popular Mexican restaurant chain in Beaver Valley Mall, Center Township, experienced a severe Hepatitis A outbreak that resulted in widespread illness and fatalities. Experts traced the outbreak back to green onions used in the restaurant's dishes, contaminated by infected food handlers. As the virus spread rapidly, it affected over 600 people, leading to three fatalities and prompting hundreds to seek medical attention.

When looking for the cause of the outbreak, Pennsylvania's health department initially considered the source to be epidemic hazardous food practices, but they later discovered the cause to be contaminated green onions used in their salsa.

Once more cases of Hepatitis A spread across the county, Individuals affected by the outbreak, or their families in the case of fatalities, filed legal actions seeking compensation for medical expenses, pain and suffering, and other damages. These lawsuits underscored the severe negligence and inadequate food safety measures, leading to more people demanding accountability and food safety practices in the food industry and creating the Food Safety and Modernization Act.

Signed in 2010, the FSMA focuses on preventing food safety problems and acknowledges how harmful foodborne illnesses can be to communities. One rule in FSMA requires farm workers who handle produce to have a combination of training, education and experience necessary to perform their assigned responsibilities to reduce contamination.

Bill Marler, a lawyer who represented 78 Chi-Chi’s victims in a class action lawsuit in 2004, said this month almost 10,000 people got vaccines and explained how the outbreak changed the food industry.

“Sometimes it's easy to kind of beat up on imports, but that's not necessarily the point,” Marler said. “Chi-Chi’s and other E coli cases that occurred in the early part of the 2000s really were the impetus behind the Food Safety Modernization Act.”

The FSMA changed the regulations controlling the importation of produce and food in the United States. These new standards have been demonstrated for the growing, harvesting, packing, and holding fruits and vegetables. Importers are now assigned to ensure that their foreign suppliers comply with the FDA's new safety standards to prevent health risks.

Mauler explained how the FSMA helps agencies like the Food and Drug Administration investigate by allowing them to recall food and put a lot of traceability requirements for imported food to ensure food can be inspected before the risk of an outbreak.

“It allowed the FDA to recall food. And so that was a, you know, a big change,” said Marler. “It also set a lot of requirements for what needed to be tested on imported food products and how many times their high-risk entities needed to be inspected both inside the United States and outside the United States. The main thing was that the law was trying to be more proactive.”

The Chi-Chi's Hepatitis A outbreak served as a wake-up call for the food industry and led to the implementation of new food laws, which have helped prevent similar outbreaks from occurring in the future.

While the restaurant chain had already filed for bankruptcy weeks before the outbreak, Chi-Chi’s was compelled to pay $800,000 in class action compensations to those who'd needed to be immunized after hepatitis exposure and an over $6 million settlement to a man whose hepatitis had caused him to require a liver transplant. The company folded for good in 2004.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Beaver County food contamination 20 years ago led to safety changes