Twenty-eight people may have become ill after eating beef produced by Fairbank Farms of Ashville, N.Y., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. All but three of the suspected infections are in the Northeast and 18 are in New England, CDC spokeswoman Lola Scott Russell said.

Fairbank Farms recalled almost 546,000 pounds of fresh ground beef that had been distributed in September to stores from North Carolina to Maine. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's recall notice, dated Saturday, said the possibly tainted meat had been sold in numerous ways, from meat loaf and meatball mix to hamburger patties.

One death was an adult from Albany County, N.Y., who had several underlying health conditions, the state Health Department said. The other fatality was previously reported in New Hampshire, where a patient died of complications.

Some of the ground beef was sold at Trader Joe's, Price Chopper, Lancaster, Wild Harvest, Shaw's, BJ's, Ford Brothers, and Giant stores in packages that carried the number "EST. 492" on the label. Those products were packaged Sept. 15-16 and may have been labeled with a sell-by date from Sept. 19 through Sept. 28, meaning they are no longer being sold as fresh product in supermarkets, Fairbank Farms said.

The rest of the ground beef, packaged in wholesale-sized containers under the Fairbank Farms name, was distributed to stores in Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. That meat was likely repackaged for sale and would likely have differing package and sell-by dates.

The USDA was urging customers with concerns to contact the stores where they bought the meat.

Ron Allen, Fairbank's CEO, urged consumers to check their freezers for the recalled ground beef.

Companies subject to such recalls are allowed to cook tainted meat to kill the bacteria and then use the meat in other products, a common industry practice. That won't happen in this case, the firm said.

"At the end of the day, this product ... is going in the garbage," company spokeswoman Agi Schafer said.

Fairbank Farms has had two other voluntary recalls over the last two years. In September 2007, the company recalled 884 pounds of ground-beef products because they may have been contaminated with E. coli, the USDA said. And in May 2008, it recalled 22,481 pounds of ground-beef products that may have contained pieces of plastic.