Four more cases of E.Coli poisoning
Further tests under way as seven-month-old baby and three others are hospitalised in Lille
A SEVEN-month-old baby is in intensive care and two other children and an adult have also been hospitalised, in a further E.Coli food poisoning outbreak in the north of France.
The patients are being treated at a hospital in Lille, where nine children were admitted last month with similar symptoms after eating hamburgers from a discount supermarket, one of whom is still in a coma.
Further investigations are under way to determine the cause of this latest infection. Early analysis suggests that two of the four people hospitalised have not eaten hamburgers recently.
A woman in Bègles-en-Gironde, near Bordeaux, died from a different strain of E.Coli at the weekend. She was one of seven people hospitalised after eating vegetable sprouts.
None of the cases reported in France so far is linked to the E.Coli strain that caused 48 deaths in Germany last month. The European Union has traced the source of that outbreak to Egyptian seeds and beans, which have been banned from all EU member states until the end of October.
Food safety officers have reinforced their spot checks on fast food outlets as a result of the recent food poisoning outbreaks.
The government's consumer safety watchdog DGCCRF has visited 1,700 restaurants in the past fortnight. Nine have been temporarily closed, 43 fined and 241 issued with a warning.
Almost 400kg of illegal meat was seized in the Alpes-Maritimes and destroyed because the restaurants had failed to store the produce at the correct temperature.
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Photo: Henri FRONTIER - Fotolia.com
