Boston - A regional supermarket chain has recalled hamburger meat from 124 stores because E. coli bacteria was found in two samples. Health officials said they were widening the investigation.
The common bacteria had sickened about 16 people in Massachusetts and at least five in New Hampshire who ate hamburger purchased from a variety of supermarkets, said Mark Leccese, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Health.
He said health officers would interview people who became ill as well as grocery store workers.
“We try to trace it from the kitchen table back to the farm,” he said.
The Shaw's supermarket chain voluntarily recalled hamburger from 124 stores across New England after tests confirmed the presence of E. coli in meat samples from two stores in New Hampshire.
Shaw's spokesman Bernard Rogan said he was not certain how much beef was affected by the recall, but estimated it was thousands of pounds.
The Boston Globe reported that a higher-than-normal number of E. coli infection cases also had been reported in Connecticut, New York and Maine and that there had been a series of telephone conference calls between New England health officials and officials from the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
CDC spokesman Kent Taylor said he could not confirm that numbers were higher than usual but said the CDC was examining cases in New England and would compare them with reports in other states.
The first case of E. coli infection in Massachusetts was reported on May 23 and the last was reported on June 2, Leccese said.
Some of the patients - ranging from small children to a 63-year-old - required hospitalization but none of the infections were serious, he said. Last year, just three cases of E. coli infection were reported to the department, Leccese said.
The same strain of E. coli was believed responsible for several other outbreaks, including one that sickened 500 Washington state residents in 1993 after eating hamburgers from Jack in the Box, the Globe said. Three children died and 67 people were hospitalized in that outbreak.
In 1997, the strain was blamed for an outbreak that killed several people who drank unpasteurized apple cider. It also caused an outbreak that made as many as 10,000 sick in Japan, according to Dr. Bela Matyas, medical director of the epidemiology at the Massachusetts health department.
E. coli is most commonly spread through undercooked meat and unwashed fruits and vegetables. Symptoms usually show within eight days of consuming the bacteria, and can range from stomach cramps to diarrhea.
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