After first sending Spain’s agricultural industry into a tailspin by falsely accusing that country’s cucumbers, German authorities on June 5 pointed a finger of blame at local beansprouts — specifically the produce of an organic farm in the village of Bienenbttel, around 70 kilometers south of Hamburg — as the source of an outbreak of deadly E. Coli infections. But the next day, the Ministry of Agriculture of Lower Saxony, which includes Hamburg and Bienenbttel, declared that 23 of 40 samples taken from the farm had tested negative for the virulent strain of enterohemorrhagic strain E. Coli that has caused 21 deaths so far. So is the farm off the hook?
Not quite, if only because the farm continues to be prominent in the investigation’s attempt to re-trace the supply chain that led to the infections. “We can’t give beansprouts the all-clear just yet,” says Reinhard Burger, President of the Robert Koch Institute , Germany’s federal agency responsible for disease control. Gert Lindemann, the Agriculture Minister of Lower Saxony said deliveries of the farm’s beansprouts had been linked to restaurants in his own state as well as Schleswig-Holstein and other regions where people had fallen ill. And, on the same day that the test results were announced, officials decided to take further samples of the bean sprout seeds from the farm — some of which were imported from Asia — for more in-depth analysis. A team of RKI inspectors is now on location at the farm.
Though it has been shut down, the farm in Bienenbttel is putting up a fight. With reporters from all over the world camping outside his farm, Klaus Verbeck the managing director of Gaertnerhof Bienenbttel, told the Neue Osnabrcker Zeitung, a regional newspaper, that no fertilisers are used to produce beansprouts and there are no animals on his farm. E. Coli contamination is believed to enter the food supply via animal manure. “I can’t understand how the processes we have here and the accusations could possibly fit together,” Verbeck told the paper. “The sprouts are grown from seeds and water, and they aren’t fertilised at all. There aren’t any animal fertilisers used in other areas on the farm either.”
The agriculture ministry in Lower Saxony would not release the name of the distributor involved but German media has carried reports that a company in the city of Mlln called Fruchthof Mlln allegedly delivered the sprouts to the Lbeck eatery and other restaurants. The director of the company, Johanna Tramm, told the DPA news agency on Monday that “we have recalled the beansprouts and we are waiting for the results of lab tests.”
Under fire for its chaotic handling of the crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has set up a special task force to deal with the EHEC outbreak and the government is holding a summit on June 8 in Berlin that will bring together the various ministries, representatives of Germany’s federal states and experts. Meanwhile, RKI scientists and experts across the country are working round the clock to try to locate the source of the infection — with raw vegetables still the main suspect. There is some good news. RKI President Burger says that on June 7, for the first time, there was a downward trend in the number of EHEC cases. “We hope that there’s light at the end of the tunnel,” he says. “Either consumers have heeded the warning and aren’t eating raw vegetables, or the contaminated food as the source of infection has disappeared.” But then, so would all the best clues to how the contamination occured in the first place. With reporting by Hannah Beech/Beijing
See a quick guide to the FDA
See the top 10 most dangerous foods
