Seven French Kids Hospitalised by E. Coli Burgers

Seven children aged between 20 months and eight years old were hospitalised in France after eating burgers infected with E.coli from German meat.

The children had eaten defrosted hamburgers made by the French company SEB which said the meat was taken from animals slaughtered in three European countries and processed in France.

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"There's meat from Germany, there's meat from Belgium and from Holland," SEB chief executive Guy Lamorlette told AFP. "There are several suppliers. We will have to await the test results to say which is contaminated."

A spokesman for the Regional Health Agency (ARS) in Lille, northern France, where the children were hospitalised on Wednesday, told AFP: "They are in a serious but not worrying state. Their lives are not at all in danger."

The "Steak Country" burgers were bought in French branches of German supermarket Lidl. SEB said it had recalled them and Lidl said it had removed them from its shelves in France.

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Health authorities said the infection was a rare strain of the E. coli bacteria and was not linked to the similar outbreak in Germany.

The ARS official said the children had suffered from bloody diarrhoea, which also struck victims of the outbreak in Germany which has been blamed on infected vegetable sprouts.

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The French infections "have no link at present with the recent epidemic in Germany," the official added, however.

Source-AFP

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