Eight children hospitalised in E coli outbreak

EIGHT children were hospitalised in France with E coli infections after eating hamburgers that manufacturers said could come from Germany, where an outbreak of the bacteria has killed 37 people.

The “Steak Country” burgers were bought in French branches of German supermarket Lidl.

Lidl has said that the burgers believed to be behind the new E coli outbreak in France have never been sold in Ireland.

The retailer added that no other product from the French supplier SEB, Sait-Dizier is sold in their Irish stores.

The children, the youngest of whom is 20 months old, had eaten frozen hamburgers made by SEB, which said the meat was taken from animals slaughtered in three European countries and processed in France.

The cases come after a major E. coli outbreak that killed 38 people — all in Germany except for one woman who died in Sweden after visiting Germany — and sickened 3,300 people in 16 countries.

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

“There’s meat from Germany, there’s meat from Belgium and from Holland” in the burgers, SEB chief executive Guy Lamorlette said. “There are several suppliers. We will have to await the test results to say which is contaminated.”

A spokesman in Lille, where the children were hospitalised, said: “They are in a serious but not worrying state.” One of the victims’ condition was life-threatening, a medical source told Reuters.