s other individuals suffered permanent debilitating effects from the outbreak.
Customers blamed the restaurant chain, and Jack In The Box blamed state officials for not informing the company of new requirements for higher grill temperatures that might have prevented the problem. The company also placed responsibility with their meat supplier, and filed a lawsuit against the processor. However, that company has a full-time U.S. Agriculture Department inspection staff on-site, and did not have a contractual obligation with Jack In The Box to test meat (Martin, 1993, p. 3).
There is nearly universal agreement that regardless of where the E. coli initially came from, it could have been eliminated had the restaurants cooked their hamburgers to higher temperatures. The reluctance to do this may have been spurred by a desire to process more customer orders, which requires a minimum of cooking time, or may stem from the relative inexperience of many of Jack In The Box's workers. During 1990, Jack In The Box was cite
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