Doubling Down

It’s back to the bean sprouts for the Germans, according to the BBC: German tests link bean sprouts to deadly E. coli

New data released in Germany strongly suggests that locally produced bean sprouts were, as suspected, the source of the deadly E. coli outbreak.

“It’s the bean sprouts,” said Reinhard Burger, head of Germany’s centre for disease control.

Officials initially blamed the E. coli, which has killed 29 people, on imported cucumbers, then bean sprouts.
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Mr Burger, who heads the Robert Koch Institute, told reporters on 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.

The institute, he added, was lifting its warning against eating cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce, but keeping it in place for the sprouts.
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“People who ate sprouts were nine times more likely to have bloody diarrhoea than those who did not,” Mr Burger said.

Germany’s top disease control official said the origin of the contamination was still believed to be the small organic farm in Lower Saxony which first came under suspicion at the weekend.
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Lower Saxony agriculture minister Gert Lindemann said earlier this week that experts had found no traces of the E. coli bacterium strain at the Bienenbuettel farm but he did not rule it out as the source of the contamination.

In an interview to be published in next week’s edition of Focus magazine, Mr Lindemann said some 60 of the people taken ill had eaten sprouts from the farm, which employs about 15 people.

Contamination might have been caused by contaminated seeds or “poor hygiene”, he added.

Let’s see, 60 of the thousands who became ill definitely ate the bean sprouts, there is no evidence of the E. coli at the farm, so it must be the bean sprouts?

How about, it was in the supply chain, with the contamination being picked up in a truck, warehouse, or other facility? How about a restaurant supplier who also handles meat products, because E. coli comes from animals, not plants? The transfer to plants is normally through the water supply or contaminated equipment.

They may never find the source, because everyone involved would have steam-cleaned their facilities as soon as the problem went public, just to be sure.