WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Sunday it was investigating a strain of E.coli bacteria found in ground beef shipped from a Beef America Co. plant to a Virginia grocery store late last month.
A compliance officer would arrive at the Norfolk, Nebraska slaughtering and production facility to check the company's records and determine where other ground beef handled that day was shipped, said USDA spokeswoman Jacque Knight.
Knight said the 40-60 pounds of fresh ground beef sold by the Emporia, Va. store Sept. 3-4 had been recalled about two weeks ago after a random sample taken by USDA turned up the E.coli bacteria. Test results from a second sample taken from the meat at the store also turned up positive.
"What we're checking now is too see what further distribution there was of the product", originating from the Norfolf Beef America plant, Knight said.
A television report on the Washington NBC affiliate, WRC, quoted a spokesman for Beef America as saying he did not believe the company's plant was the source of the contamination.
The latest report of tainted hamburger meat follows the recall from Hudson Foods Inc. last month of 25 million pounds of frozen hamburger patties.
South Korea last week asked the United States to halt frozen beef exports from a plant operated by IBP Inc after the E.coli bacteria turned up in 18 metric tons shipped to South Korea. IBP has agreed to buy Hudson Foods.
Knight cautioned consumers against panicking, noting that there had been no reports of any illnesses associated with the latest E.coli incident. The recall prevented any meat still in the store from being sold, Knight said.
USDA has collected 16,000 random samples at grocery stores and processing plants around the country since 1994, and this was only the ninth positive identification of meat containing the dangerous, and sometimes deadly, E.coli, Knight said.
"It's a very rare finding," she said. "But the message ... is that we want retail stores and federal plants to be aware that we do sample and we could recall them."
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