On Thursday, a Californian food company voluntarily recalled frozen ground beef that is being held responsible for causing E.coli infection at a Boy Scout camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Virginia health authorities have confirmed that the strain of E.coli which caused the infections at the camp is the same that has been detected in the contaminated beef.

The beef was packed by S&S Foods at its Azusa plant in California and sold to institutional customers all over the US. The company has announced that it is recalling 153,630 pounds of frozen ground beef after state health authorities in Virginia linked the E. coli outbreak at a Boy Scout camp to the strain of E. coli 0157:H7 found in the beef. An S&S official however announced that the company will also look into possibility of some other source being the original cause of the outbreak.

Between July 20 and 26, around seventy boy scouts and staff members from a summer camp at Goshen, Virginia displayed symptoms of E.coli infection. Among them, twenty seven cases of the infection have been confirmed while one person remains hospitalized with complications. Soon after the outbreak, the camp was shut down as a precautionary measure.

-Kalyani Mookherji