Food Poisoning Suspected in Illness of 11 : Health: County officials checking Bullock’s employees. As many as 200 workers may have been affected, they say.

COSTA MESA —  County health officials are investigating an apparent outbreak of food poisoning that made at least 11 Bullock’s employees ill but may have affected as many as 200 workers at the store.

“I feel very confident the numbers are going to increase significantly,” County Environmental Health Director Robert E. Merryman said late Friday. “Public health nurses are interviewing people now. There’s a very good chance that a couple of hundred people became ill.”

Executives at Bullock’s South Coast Plaza store declined comment, referring a reporter to a corporate spokeswoman in Atlanta, who was not available.

According to Merryman, the incident began Tuesday when store executives asked 600 employees to inventory the merchandise. They also contracted with a broiled chicken franchiser “to bring in lots of chicken,” he said, and “prepared a rice salad, rolls, brownies and ice tea. And they may have had milk.” The meal was served between 4 and 5 p.m. Tuesday to hundreds of employees on three floors, Merryman said.

Late Wednesday, Merryman’s office received several calls from employees who complained of suffering stomach cramps, diarrhea and fever seven to 11 hours after the meal. By Thursday, the tally had grown to 11 complaints from Bullock’s employees, Merryman said, and a physician also called to report suspected food poisoning.

Merryman said the county’s investigation into the incident was delayed Thursday “when we ran into the stalemate with Bullock’s”--when local store officials refused to release employee names and addresses to health authorities. Eventually Bullock’s corporate officials agreed to release the information, and on Friday several public health nurses began calling employees, looking for additional food poisoning victims.

County investigators also gathered samples of leftover chicken from Tuesday’s meal, Merryman said. Laboratory tests on that chicken should be available Monday, showing whether it was contaminated.

But samples of the rice salad and other items prepared at Bullock’s were not available for testing, Merryman said, even though “a couple of people complained that the rice salad didn’t taste too good.” Still, he said, “the fact that it didn’t taste too good is not always a good indicator on spoilage.”

Merryman said the chicken was supplied by El Pollo Loco franchises in Costa Mesa and Tustin, and both stores were inspected Friday.

Franchise owner Gary Brubaker said he was confident the 1,400 pieces of broiled chicken he supplied Bullock’s were not contaminated.

“It didn’t get the people sick,” he asserted. “We served thousands of people that chicken in our restaurant and nobody else got sick.”

Norman McKinnon, director of marketing for El Pollo Loco, said health officials inspected the two restaurants and “gave us a clean bill of health.” He said none of the employees at the restaurants complained of being sick.