The restaurant behind Canberra’s largest salmonella outbreak has made a public apology to affected diners.

The Copa Brazilian Churrasco restaurant in Dickson released the statement on Thursday morning, after 140 people fell ill and 15 were admitted to hospital after eating bad mayonnaise nearly two weeks ago.

“It is with sincere compassion and genuine sorrow that we apologize to all the people and their families affected by the recent tragic sequence of events,” the statement said.

“We have removed all products containing raw eggs from our menu to ensure an outbreak of this kind is never repeated at The Copa.”

The release said the restaurant management had been unable to make an official statement earlier due to the ongoing investigation, but decided to make an apology now given the release date was unknown.

It’s never wrong to say sorry, especially when it was clear that 140 barfing people had one thing in common: they ate at the Copa.

To now remove all raw-egg based dishes is nice, but too little too late. Any restaurant that willingly ignores risks associated with its food gets little sympathy. There have been plenty of raw-egg related outbreaks in Australia — so many that we have our own table — including Canberra in 2011.

A table of raw-egg related outbreaks in Australia is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/raw-egg-related-outbreaks-australia.