Officials Seek Cause of Illinois E. Coli Outbreak

State health officials were searching Saturday for the cause of an E. coli outbreak that left more than 100 people ill after a Labor Day weekend party near Petersburg, Ill.

Tom Schafer, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Public Health, said 127 people reported illnesses. Hospital treatment was required for 18 of them after the party, held Sept. 4 in a cow pasture outside the central Illinois town.

E. coli, strains of which can be deadly, is found in cattle intestines, but the precise reasons the party-goers were made ill were not clear, officials said.

“It’s going to be a ways off,” said Schafer of determining potential causes of the illnesses. “We may never know exactly.”

The party, titled “Cornstalk ’99 . . . Family and Friends Feeding Frenzy,” drew about 1,800 people from 15 counties and six other states. The first illnesses were reported Thursday evening, when five people were admitted to area hospitals.

E. coli can spread to humans through tainted meat and unpasteurized milk. The incubation period for E. coli-related illness is typically three to eight days, Schafer said.

An E. coli outbreak last week in upstate New York has claimed two lives so far and sickened 611 people, state health officials said. Health investigators traced the source to a well at the Washington County Fairgrounds in Greenwich, N.Y. Runoff from a rainstorm may have washed the bacteria into the water supply from a cow pasture.