Reno Salmonella Outbreak

The Reno Gazette-Journal’s Jason Hidalgo reported on the reopen of Jazmine, a restaurant that was recently identified as the source of a Salmonella outbreak, yesterday – the same day that the International Food Safety Network came out with an infosheet about the outbreak.  From the Gazette-Journal article:

Jazmine was ordered closed by the Washoe County District health Department on Aug. 23 after it tested positive for salmonella. The restaurant, which serves up popular Asian fare such as pot stickers, dim sum dumplings, pork ribs and sushi, re-opened its doors for dinner on Aug. 29. The restaurant could have opened two days earlier but had to wait for most of its employees to get approved to return to work.

Despite receiving a clean bill of health to operate again, the restaurant is still struggling to get back customers who have stayed away following the incident.
“Business has dropped tremendously,” said manager and co-owner David Tran. “We’ve lost more than half of our business right now.”

The health department hasn’t been able to trace the source of the outbreak to any particular food in the restaurant. That makes it likely that the source of the outbreak was an infected food handler, said Randall Todd, director of epidemiology at the district health department.