Food safety attorney weighs in on second Costco chicken salad recall

A warning Monday for people who shop at a Costco store in Lynnwood—health department investigators say four people were sickened by salmonella and that rotisserie chicken salad is likely to blame.

Health officials say the outbreak is isolated to the one store.

Even if you don't eat the chicken salad, salmonella linked to the store where you typically do your grocery shopping is alarming.

"I don't know, I might think twice about buying prepared food like that, absolutely,” said Scott Sander, who was loading up his groceries in the parking lot of the Lynnwood Costco when we caught up with him.

Bill Marler with Seattle food safety law firm Marler and Clark says it’s not a bad idea to a avoid this kind of product.

"Prepared food in restaurants or grocery stores has become a much more common way over the past few years for food-borne illness to occur,” Marler explained.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture four people became ill with salmonella, and three of them had consumed the Lynnwood Costco's chicken salad in early September.

Although Marler says Costco has one of the country's better food-safety programs, the chicken salad has been a problem before.

Last year 19 people in seven states including Washington got E. coli; the same product was involved.

Marler is currently representing one of those people in a lawsuit against the buy-in-bulk giant.

“In this instance a 19-year-old girl was hospitalized for several months, lost her large intestine, is on dialysis, needs a kidney transplant, and it has completely upturned her life,” said Marler.

In that outbreak the culprit was determined likely to be celery and onions in the salad, which was shipped to a number of stores.

Marler can't say definitively what caused the contamination this time, but he thinks the isolation to just the Lynnwood store points to undercooked chicken.

Cox Media Group