Tag Archives: Germany

Sprouts sorta confirmed as cause of German E. coli O104 outbreak; 33 dead; ‘you cannot punish the farm for bad luck’

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As the death toll in the German E. coli O104 outbreak rose to 33, the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) confirmed test results announced on Friday that identified bean sprouts from an organic farm in the northern village of Bienenbuettel as carrying the virulent E. coli.

A man notified authorities after suspecting he might be in possession of some of the dangerous sprouts. The Bienenbuettel farm has since closed down.

"These results are an important step in the chain of evidence," said BfR director Andreas Hensel.

The EU executive’s health chief John Dalli welcomed the confirmation.

"I welcome this extremely important development: the source of contamination is now identified and the epidemiological findings are backed by laboratory results. EU consumers and trade partners shall now have full confidence as regards the safety of EU’s vegetables."

Speaking on WDR-5 radio station on Saturday, the minister for the environment and consumer protection in North-Rhine-Westphalia, Johannes Remmel, urged all consumers to report any suspicious vegetable sprouts.

But in another premature explanation, Gert Hahne, spokesman for the consumer protection office of Lower Saxony state, said today, "Everything we have looked into until now shows the farm was flawless. It is hygienic and followed all the regulations. No matter how you look at it we don’t see any fault with the farm or legal ground to hold them accountable. You cannot punish someone for having bad luck."

However the farm has been shut down. Authorities say results of tests taken there have yet to place E.coli on site, but that some 500 samples are still being examined — including some from the farm’s seeds, which came from Europe and Asia.

I don’t have confidence because no one is talking about the on-farm food safety steps that are taken other then some opaque ‘strict standards.’ Where did the seeds originate? Were they pre-treated with chlorine before germination or is that not allowed under organic standards? Is anyone checking? What is a suspicious vegetable sprout?

Faith-based food safety at its best.
 

Au moins 31 cas mortels dus à E. coli O104:H4 liés ; a des graines Germées en allemagne

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Plus de 3000 personnes malades comprenant 795 cas d’insuffisance rénale dans l’une des plus grandes épidémies de l’histoire

Après des semaines d’enquête, les autorités allemandes de la santé ont dit le 10 juin 2011 que « ce sont des graines germées ».

Les autorités de l’Allemagne recommandent d’éviter de consommer des graines germées ; les conseils de santé à propos des réserves de consommation des laitues, des tomates et des concombres ont été levés. Même si les analyses des graines germées de la ferme mise en cause n’ont pas détecté la souche épidémique, l’épidémiologie a fait le lien entre la consommation de graines germées et la maladie.
Les graines germées crues ont été liées au moins à 55 épidémies de maladies infectieuses d’origine alimentaire depuis 1988.

Les maladies associées aux graines germées fraîches peuvent provenir de semences, de l’eau, ou du sol contaminés, ou d’une mauvaise hygiène.

La plus importante épidémie de maladies d’origine alimentaire en Allemagne que l’on n’ait jamais connu a commencé au début du mois de mai, et des malades, en particulier ceux souffrant d’un syndrome hémolytique et urémique (ce qui conduit à une insuffisance rénale), sont encore signalés. E. coli O104:H4, provoque une maladie semblable au sérogroupe le plus commun O157:H7. Cette souche semble être particulièrement dangereuse et a conduit à plus de décès et d’hospitalisations que ce qui est observé d’habitude lors d’une épidémie à E. coli pathogène.

La majorité des cas sont signalés dans le nord de l’Allemagne, mais il y a eu cas des cas de maladies au Royaume-Uni, États-Unis, Canada, Autriche, Danemark, Norvège, Suisse, Suède, Espagne, France et Pays-Bas. À l’exception de 2 cas seulement, toutes les personnes concernées avaient récemment visité l’Allemagne.

La source de l’épidémie a été difficile à déterminer car les indicateurs et les agents pathogènes ont été retrouvés sur plusieurs des aliments qui ont été étudiés, mais la souche épidémique n’a pas été retrouvée. Les données épidémiologiques publiées par les autorités sanitaires allemandes le 10 juin ont montré que les graines germées étaient la source de l’épidémie.
 

Smoking sprouts found in German outbreak?

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Hours after German health-types announced they were convinced sprouts were epidemiologically linked an outbreak of E. coli O104 that has killed 31 and sickened 3,000, scientists have possibly found the bug – in an opened package of sprouts retrieved from the trash of a household in Rhein-Sieg-Kreis. Two of the three family members in the household ate the sprouts and were infected with the outbreak pathogen.

Further verification is pending.

Next puzzle: how did the E. coli O104 get there, why such a massive level of contamination to make so many sick.

And there are various stories circulating now that say consumers should just cook their sprouts to be safe.

If 31 people die and 3,000 get sick, there’s probably a massive level of contamination or virulence – or both – and I wouldn’t want those sprouts (or any) in a restaurant kitchen, on the hands of a sandwich artist, in a salad bar, or in my kitchen. Cross-contamination is a significant issue, which is why food safety types try to figure out how to lower bacterial loads from farm-to-fork.
 

Nuevo Folleto Informativo: Brotes de soja han sido la causa del brote de E. coli O104:H4 que ya ha causado al menos 31 muertes

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Traducido por Gonzalo Erdozain

Resumen del folleto informativo mas reciente:
– Autoridades Alemanas recomiendan evitar el consumo de brotes de soja y las advertencias ?con respecto a lechuga, tomates y pepinos ?han sido retiradas.
– Aunque las pruebas realizadas a brotes ?de soja de la granja involucrada no dieron positivo ?a la cepa del brote, ?la investigación epidemiológica apunta a los brotes de soja.
– Desde 1988, al menos 55 brotes de enfermedades alimentarias han sido causados por brotes crudos.
– Dichas enfermedades pueden provenir de semillas, agua o suelo contaminado,
o por falta de higiene.

Los folletos informativos son creados semanalmente y puestos en restaurantes, tiendas y granjas, y son usados para entrenar y educar a través del mundo. Si usted quiere proponer un tema o mandar fotos para los folletos, contacte a Ben Chapman a benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu.

Puede seguir las historias de los folletos informativos y barfblog en twitter
@benjaminchapman y @barfblog.
 

Sorta sure sprouts cause of German E. coli outbreak; advisories for other produce lifted

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"It is the sprouts."

So says the president of Germany’s national disease control center, Reinhard Burger.

Burger says the Robert Koch Institute is lifting its warning against eating cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce but keeping the warning in place for the sprouts.

Burger told reporters Friday that even though no tests of the sprouts from a farm in Lower Saxony had come back positive, the epidemiological investigation of the pattern of the outbreak had produced enough evidence to draw the conclusion.

To date, 30 people have been killed and almost 3,000 sickened in the outbreak of E. coli O104.

An updated table of sprout-related outbreaks is available at

http://bites.ksu.edu/sprouts-associated-outbreaks

 

Sprouts still suspect in Germany; E coli O104 toll at 26

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Bean sprouts remain  the focus of a hunt for the cause of a toxic E coli bacteria outbreak in Germany, Consumer Affairs Minister Ilse Aigner said Wednesday after a crisis summit.

Aigner said the Biogaertnerhof market garden remained under suspicion because its products had been eaten by so many EHEC victims. Two more groups of patients had been identified Wednesday whose diet had included Biogaertnerhof vegetable sprouts.

Health Minister Daniel Bahr said an official warning to Germans against eating any raw lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers or sprouts remained in place until the source was confirmed.
 

Germany fingers cucumbers as E. coli source – again

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Cucumbers came under fresh suspicion on Wednesday in Germany’s desperate hunt for a pathogen that has killed 26 people, with investigators discovering the mutant bacteria on food scraps in a family’s garbage.

It was the first time the type O 104 enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) had been confirmed on any food since the outbreak began in mid-May. All the other evidence has come from fecal tests.

The scraps turned up in garbage in the eastern city of Magdeburg, authorities of the state of Saxony-Anhalt said.

Three of the family have been sick: the father only had a stomach upset, the mother has been discharged after a hospital stay for diarrhea and the daughter is suffering from hemolytic-uraemic syndrome (HUS), a condition caused by EHEC where the kidneys fail.

Experts said they still did not know how the bacteria came to be on the cucumber, which had been in the bin for a week and a half.

Earlier in the day, investigators affirmed that bean sprouts from a market garden remained the likeliest cause of the E coli outbreak, despite the fact that the pathogen has not been found on any sprouts.

At a Berlin news conference, officials summed up the evidence against sprouts.
One woman working at the Bienenbuettel Gaertnerhof, an organic sprout grower, has been infected with EHEC, the germ behind the outbreak, and two other women there had unexplained diarrhea in May, Lower Saxony state officials said.
Two more clusters of EHEC victims were meanwhile confirmed as having eaten sprouts from the Gaertnerhof.

Consumer Affairs Minister Ilse Aigner said a total of eight clusters of EHEC victims who ate Gaertnerhof products had been spotted this way

German E. coli O104: 26 dead, 674 HUS, 1755 sick

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While German Chancellor Angela Merkel was dining in D.C. last night with President Obama, two more people died in Germany’s E. coli O104 outbreak, and today health-types said raw sprouts remain a primary suspect.

At least 26 people have died, 674 have developed a life-threatening complication from E. coli and 1,755 are stricken.

“It’s not normal that people go out for a salad and die of the consequences,” Linda McAvan, a U.K. member of the European Parliament, said today at a session devoted to the outbreak.

Sprouts can’t be ruled out as a cause of the outbreak because the bacterium may be gone from the farm where they were grown, scientists said. Traces may be undetectable now if the offending produce was grown from a depleted batch of contaminated seed weeks ago, said James Paton, head of the bacterial pathogenesis laboratory at the University of Adelaide in South Australia.

“They are still pretty strongly suspicious of the sprouts because the epidemiological link was strong,” Paton said in a telephone interview today. “It’s just that they haven’t found it at the farm.”

The property, Gaertnerhof Bienenbuettel, which has produced sprouts for 25 years, said it recalled produce and informed its customers immediately. Lab tests in mid-May found no evidence of E. coli, its proprietors said in a statement, adding they were “shocked and concerned” at being linked to the infection.

Outside health experts and even German lawmakers have strongly criticised the German investigation, saying the infections should have been spotted much sooner.

Weeks after the outbreak began on May 2, German officials are still looking for its cause.

Consumer Affairs Minister Ilse Aigner said today bean sprouts remain the focus, adding the Biogaertnerhof market garden remained under suspicion because its products had been eaten by so many EHEC victims. ‘There are now eight sickness clusters that can be traced back to this farm,’ she said.

Biogaertnerhof, owned by a strict vegetarian, grows sprouts from mung beans, peas and other plants and distributes them to factories, canteens and shops in northern Germany, mainly for use in salads.

Bahr said an official warning to Germans against eating any raw lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers or sprouts remained in place until the source was confirmed.
 

Amateur epi-time in Germany; how many foods can be fingered? Health types say sprouts now cleared? 22 dead, 627 HUS, 1,526 sick

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German officials said today initial tests provided no evidence that sprouts from an organic farm in northern Germany were the cause of the country’s deadly E. coli outbreak.

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.

Osterholm gets it right when he tells msnbc, "All this wishy-washy back-and-forth, it’s just incompetence. Where’s the epidemiology?"

Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota says that continuing failure to identify the source of the deadly German outbreak of E. coli poisoning points to a flawed investigation that could shake faith in the global public health system.

European food safety officials appear to rely far more on bacterial cultures than on tracing back what people involved in the outbreak actually ate — and where it came from. But a microbiological approach has repeatedly been shown to fall short of a detailed study of the epidemiology, or health patterns, that characterize foodborne illness outbreaks, Osterholm said.

And why does no one seem to care that a bunch of Spanish cucumbers were E. coli positive, just not the outbreak strain? Are they grown in sewage?
 

German E. coli O104 outbreak: 22 dead, 627 HUS, 1,1,526 sick; raw sprouts fingered

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The head of Germany’s national disease control center last night raised the death toll to 22 – 21 people in Germany and one in Sweden – and said another 2,153 people in Germany were ill from the bacteria. That figure includes 627 people who have developed a rare, serious complication that can cause kidney failure.

Updates are expected later today.