Amy e-mailed me from Australia last night – or during the day for her what with a 15-hour time difference – to tell me she had a sandwich and didn’t notice until the last bite that it was stacked with sprouts, and to remind her of this if she got sick in a couple of days.

So after 53 deaths and some 4,300 illnesses, Germany has decided it’s OK to eat raw sprouts again –just not the ones from fenugreek seeds from Egypt. How would a consumer eating a sandwich know where the sprout seeds originate, when it appears most sprouters don’t know where their seeds originate.

A table of sprout-related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/sprouts-associated-outbreaks.