Objective To develop a rapid and simple method of loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) for detecting Escherichia coli O157∶H7 in foods. Methods Based on the characteristic conserved sequence of lipopolysaccharide gene (rfbE, GenBank S83460) of O157 antigen and flagellin gene (fliC, GenBank L07388) of H7 antigen, the 1oop-mediated isothermal amplification method was developed to detect the specificity of twenty-one E Coli O157∶H7 strains and non E Coli O157∶H7 strains. The results of LAMP were compared with PCR. The feasibility of LAMP was evaluated by detecting Escherichia coli O157:H7 in food samples. Results The detection could be finished by LAMP within 1 hour; the sensitivity was 96.72%, the specificity was 85.71% and the accuracy was 93.26%. The sensitivity of LAMP was higher than that of PCR. Conclusion LAMP is a simple, rapid method suitable for screening Escherichia coli O157:H7 in suspicious samples.