China has suspended the import of one poultry product from the United States after finding it was contaminated by E. coli O157, a bacterium that causes bloody diarrhea, quarantine authorities said on Wednesday.

The case was the first reported one in which frozen chicken, a major US export to China, had been infected with the pathogen.

"China has notified the US and halted the import of frozen chicken wing tips with the registered code of P-19378," said Xu Bing of the State General Administration for Quality Supervision and Inspection and Quarantine.

The tainted products, shipped from Atlanta, amounted to 24.4 tons. They were found in a container at a wharf in Huidong County of south China's Guangdong Province, quarantine official Zhou Weidong said.

The bureau destroyed and buried all the meat to prevent contagion, he said.

E. coli O157:H7 infection leads to severe diarrhea and occasional kidney failure. The bacterium killed 12 people in Japan in 1996 and affected more than 10,000 people, quarantine experts said.

In the US, up to 20,000 cases of infection occur each year, according to some US newspaper reports.

Tan Zhanglong, a division chief of the Huizhou Quarantine Bureau, said the ban on import of the frozen chicken meat will not affect other US poultry imports into China.

Neither the US Embassy or the US exporter in Atlanta was available for comment on Wednesday.

Between January and August, 9,540 tons of frozen chicken came from the US to China via Shanghai ports alone, Chinese customs authorities said.

(China Daily December 27, 2001)