Health officials link 3 more E. coli cases to raw milk
Three more E. coli illnesses have been linked to raw milk or other dairy products at a farm in Gibbon, the Minnesota Department of Health announced Friday.
Eight E. coli cases have now been linked to the Hartmann Dairy Farm. Two of the new cases were in school-aged children who consumed milk from the farm. The third new case was in an infant who lived in the same household as a victim in one of the earlier cases.
None of the three children was hospitalized.
The cases had the same DNA fingerprint as the other E. coli cases linked to the farm -- a rare strain of E. coli, health officials said.
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"That's just that much stronger evidence that the cases are linked together and that they're linked to where we found the organism. So this is a very very rare form that now has been found in samples from the dairy barn as well as the ill people," said Joni Scheftle, state public health veterinarian.
The health department said in a news release that 28 environmental and animal samples from the Hartmann farm have tested positive for E. coli 0157:H7, including samples from the barn where cows are milked.
The Hartmann Dairy Farm earlier this week denied responsibility for the E. coli cases.
(MPR reporter Rupa Shenoy contributed to this report.)