Carl’s Jr. Executive Links FDA to Bacteria in Mix; Claim Disputed by Agency

An executive of Carl’s Jr. restaurants said Monday that the federal Food and Drug Administration could have inadvertently introduced listeriosis-causing bacteria into a sample of milkshake mix that was distributed to 226 Carl’s outlets in California and Arizona.

“That’s a possibility,” Paul Mitchell, the Anaheim-based firm’s vice president for public relations, told a news conference at the Los Angeles Press Club.

“In some way (the bacteria) was introduced in the (milkshake) after the product was produced and packaged” by the fast-food chain’s supplier, he said.

The FDA discovered the potentially harmful bacteria in a batch of ice milk. Mitchell’s suggestion that the agency might have been responsible for the contamination was rebutted by George Gerstenberg, director of the FDA’s Los Angeles office.

‘In a Clean Room’

“We do these tests in a clean room under aseptic conditions, so there’s no chance that contamination occurred here,” Gerstenberg said when reached for comment.

Both the state Department of Food and Agriculture and a private laboratory hired by Carl’s, Sellikin Laboratories of Los Angeles, were unable to detect any Listeria monocytogenes bacteria in the same batch of ice milk, which the FDA said tested positive. Gerstenberg said eight out of eight mice died after eating the contaminated ice milk batch. However, federal, state and local health and agriculture officials have said there is no evidence that anyone was harmed by the bacteria found in a 5,000-gallon batch of ice milk, which is used in Carl’s milkshakes.

The FDA’S Cincinnati lab positively identified the bacteria as L. monocytogenes, Gerstenberg said. This is the same general kind of bacteria found last year in the Mexican-style soft cheese manufactured by Jalisco Mexican Products of Artesia. About 40 deaths were attributed to the L. monocytogenes bacteria found in Jalisco’s cheese products, but the precise source of the contamination was never found.

FDA officials notified state Department of Food and Agriculture officials of the L. monocytogenes testing results in April, but no public announcement was made because “there just didn’t seem to be any public concern at that point,” said Patton Smith of the state Department of Food and Agriculture.

Smith, director of the department’s Division of Animal Industry, suggested, however, that the Carl’s incident did raise questions over when to make such findings public.

“We’re going to have to put our heads together with (the State Department of) Health Services and decide when to push the panic button,” he said.