There is no evidence that links Australian beef to the mass E.coli outbreak at US fast food chain Chipotle, the Department of Agriculture says.
Chipotle has blamed Australian beef for hundreds of people across the US falling ill after eating the contaminated food.
That's despite the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention reportedly closing their investigation after being unable to pinpoint any of the 64 ingredients used by the restaurants as the likely culprit.
The Wall Street Journal reported that while publicly the Mexican food chain stated the same, privately it blames contaminated beef supplied by Australian farmers.
But Australia has hit back at such claims, saying there is no evidence linking Australian beef exports with recent cases of food-borne illness associated with the Chipotle restaurants.
"Australia had no US port of entry detections of bacterial contamination (E.coli) in the almost 500 million kilograms of beef exported in 2014 and 547 million kilograms of beef exported up until December 2015," a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture told AAP.
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