>> The CDC says Chipotle has been very cooperative in the E. coli investigation, but that the company is having trouble telling the agency which batches of ingredients went to which stores at which times. “The system they have is not able to solve the problem we have at hand. It’s not granular enough,” says Ian Williams, chief of the CDC’s outbreak response and prevention branch. He notes that “traceability from the farm to the point of service” should be improved throughout the food industry. In recent years, the agency has been able to find the contaminated ingredients in fewer than half of all multistate outbreaks.

To me this suggests a very simple solution. Legislate that each ingredient parcel must come with an audit trail. Assign to each parcel a reference number - a UUID or hash - that can be used to trace back its entire life and history. The solution seems so obvious that there are probably significant obstacles against doing so that I am not aware of. If such a system is implemented, then the next time a contamination breaks out, the source can be quickly identified and eliminated, then apologies can be made, and business can resume as normal.

>> The spread of norovirus in Simi Valley and Boston was caused by breaches of protocol, Ells says

Eliminating contamination entirely is a highly desirable goal, but outbreaks will likely continue occur regardless of anti-contamination measures. As a result, it makes sense to make it as easy as possible to shut down outbreaks before they become crises.