From the it’s me, not you file: sprouts unlikely to be source of O104:H4 outbreak

Seems like no one is really sure what’s going on with the ongoing cucumber, lettuce, sprouts, tomato outbreak in Germany. But German officials (same ones who said it was pretty clear that illnesses were linked to sprouts yesterday) said today that there is no evidence that the outbreak has been caused by an organic a farm in Northern Germany. According to USA Today:

The Lower-Saxony state agriculture ministry said 23 of 40 samples from the sprout farm suspected of being behind the outbreak have tested negative for the highly agressive, "super-toxic" strain of E. coli bacteria. It said tests were still under way on the other 17 sprout samples.
"The search for the outbreak’s cause is very difficult as several weeks have passed since its suspected start," the ministry said in a statement, cautioning that further testing of the sprouts and their seeds was necessary to achieve full certainty.
Negative test results on sprout batches now, however, do not mean that previous sprout batches weren’t contaminated.
The ministry statement about samples from the Gaertnerhof organic sprouts farm in the northern German village of Bienenbuettel left consumers across the continent still puzzled as to what is safe to eat.

As safe as they were before.
 

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About Ben Chapman

Dr. Ben Chapman is a professor and food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University. As a teenager, a Saturday afternoon viewing of the classic cable movie, Outbreak, sparked his interest in pathogens and public health. With the goal of less foodborne illness, his group designs, implements, and evaluates food safety strategies, messages, and media from farm-to-fork. Through reality-based research, Chapman investigates behaviors and creates interventions aimed at amateur and professional food handlers, managers, and organizational decision-makers; the gate keepers of safe food. Ben co-hosts a biweekly podcast called Food Safety Talk and tries to further engage folks online through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, maybe not surprisingly, Pinterest. Follow on Twitter @benjaminchapman.