Days after Chipotle was forced to close 43 restaurants in the Pacific Northwest due to concerns about E. coli, the fast-casual Mexican chain announced it was taking action to address the issues.
In a news release sent out Tuesday afternoon, Chipotle noted that it had closed the 43 restaurants in Oregon and Washington even though only eight have actually been linked to the bacteria. It is also conducting a “deep cleaning and full sanitization” of all restaurants in the area and getting rid of all food at the affected locations as a precaution.
“The safety of our customers and integrity of our food supply has always been our highest priority,” said Steve Ells, chairman and co-CEO of Chipotle in the statement. “We work with a number of very fresh ingredients in order to serve our customers the highest-quality, best-tasting food we can. If there are opportunities to do better, we will push ourselves to find them and enhance our already high standards for food safety.
Chipotle has also hired outside food safety consultants to look at its food safety standards.
Earlier, Fortune reported that the company is facing its first lawsuit linked to E. coli outbreak.