Chipotle under US DoJ probe over norovirus outbreak

Chipotle said it had been served with a federal grand jury subpoena as part of a criminal investigation involving a norovirus outbreak this summer at one of its restaurants in California.

The investigation was being conducted by the US attorney's office for the Central District of California in conjunction with the Food and Drug Administration, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday.

According to Chipotle Mexican Grill, the subpoena required it to produce a "broad range" of documents.

The Denver company had been under a cloud since an E coli outbreak linked to its restaurants, which was followed up by a separate norovirus outbreak in Boston. According to Chipotle, it expected sales for the fourth quarter to be down 14.6 per cent.

As per the subpoena, the company had been expected to hand over the documents related to an August 2015 outbreak of norovirus at one of its restaurants in Simi Valley, which infected more than 200 people.

Sources said, the investigators were currently looking into the norovirus outbreak that took place at the Simi Valley and were not clear with the results yet.

The company said in a statement to the US justice department, that it was ready to cooperate with the investigation as it moved forward.

Earlier investigation by the Los Angeles Department of Public Health led to the review of inspection records for local Chipotle restaurants, even though there had been no outbreaks there.

According to the statement of lawyers, a federal investigation of the Chipotle outbreak was highly unusual, because past prosecutions involving food-borne illnesses had focused on food producers who were the original source of the problems such as farmers or food manufacturers, not the restaurants or stores that sold the products.