More than 600 customers of a döner kebab restaurant have had to be hospitalised after suffering food poisoning, apparently attributed to the consumption of meat in poor condition or expired meat used to prepare the food in the establishment.
Turkish media sources reported in the last few hours that the incident occurred in a restaurant serving chicken döner kebab located in the Körfez district of the city of Kocaeli (NW Turkey), some 100 kilometres east of Istanbul, where apparently dozens of customers began to experience symptoms such as nausea and vomiting after eating at the establishment. In total, 648 people affected have been counted so far, all of them hospitalised with symptoms, of which two remain hospitalised in a critical condition after eating at the restaurant.
Turkish authorities have closed the restaurant while its owners, two people identified by the initials E.T. and K.Y., have been arrested. The governor of Kocaeli issued a statement saying that the health authorities acted immediately as soon as they became aware of the incident and that samples were taken of the meat used in the preparation of the dishes to be analysed in a laboratory, the results of which confirmed that the meat did not meet the necessary microbiological standards and therefore was not fit for human consumption.
Following this incident, experts have reiterated the importance of avoiding the consumption of low-quality chicken meat, since it is a highly perishable food that must be subject to strict controls. Some döner kebab owners, however, use chicken meat to prepare food with an expired use-by date, which increases the risk of contracting bacterial infections such as salmonella.
In some cases, unscrupulous sellers even bleach chicken to make it look fresh, or mix it with raw chicken scraps, increasing the risk of contamination and food poisoning. For all these reasons, experts advise customers of this type of restaurants to only consume döner kebab from reputable places that comply with all hygiene and sanitary standards.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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