BREAKING NEWS:

More than three dozen Newport-Mesa businesses have been added to a state list of possible buyers of tainted beef from a Chino slaughterhouse that resulted in the biggest meat recall in U.S. history.

Among the added names on the list, which the state Department of Public Health updated last week, are Hoag Hospital, the Automobile Club of Southern California and a number of restaurants. The first time the state published the list in February, many Newport-Mesa businesses protested their inclusion, and the latest version has drawn mixed reactions, as well.

Freddie Jacobs, the executive chef of the Automobile Club’s cafeteria, said his kitchen had never used any beef from the Chino plant. David Wong, the owner of Irvine Ranch Market in Costa Mesa, said he had run a check of his vendors after hearing that he was on the list and found no evidence of having bought meat from Chino.

“We searched our database, and we never did any business with them,” he said.

Andrea Winter, a spokeswoman for Hoag, said her hospital’s kitchen may have received some of the Chino beef, but administrators had dealt with the problem swiftly by sending back all ground beef after news of the recall hit.

“We did receive notification from SYSCO that we could have possibly received it, so in this particular case, when we received the information, we sent the shipment back,” Winter said.

The Department of Public Health has said that the list is not definitive and is compiled from customer lists of meat vendors believed to have purchased from the Chino slaughterhouse in the last two years. Some of the phone numbers presented on the list are out of order, while other businesses are believed to have closed — and Hoag, in the most recent version of the list, appears three times.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].