Brett Maciech
bmaciech@uwyo.edu
The recent E. coli outbreak concern in some celery for Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, Albertsons, Safeway and King Soopers has some grocery chains working closely with food providers to find the source of the problem.
Areas affected by the outbreak include Montana and Colorado where there have been possible cases. There has yet to be any reported cases in Wyoming, but some grocery store chains are still enacting caution.
Senior Manager of National Media Relations for Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club Scott Markley said in an official statement the businesses are committed to providing their customers members with safe, high-quality foods.
“As soon as we were notified by Taylor Farms that we received product containing potentially contaminated celery ingredients, we immediately notified our stores and clubs to remove all impacted product,“ Markley said.
He said he is unaware of any illnesses linked to purchases at Walmart or Sam’s Club. The businesses are working closely with Taylor Farms, the supplier, to understand how this happened and for them to implement corrective actions to prevent it from happening again.
