Uncooked curry leaves in a chutney left more than 400 people who ate at a street food festival with diarrhoea and vomiting or salmonella poisoning, health officials have found.
The leaves were contaminated with several different bacteria, experts found, which led to 29 confirmed cases of salmonella at the Street Spice festival in Newcastle in February and March.
An investigation by Public Health England (PHE) and Newcastle city council found 25 of the 29 cases had developed a strain of salmonella never found in people or food in Britain before.
According to an official report, further laboratory analysis suggested other organisms may also have caused illness including E coli and shigella.
Some of the 413 affected were found to have more than one of these infections at the same time.
No one will face prosecution because there was seen to be a lack of clear advice about the dangers of using raw curry leaves in recipes, and in general hygiene levels at the three-day event were good.
