Bean sprouts confirmed as source of E coli outbreak

GERMAN bean sprouts caused the E coli outbreak that has killed 31 people and sickened more than 3,000, investigators announced after tracking the bacteria from patients in hospital beds to restaurants and then farm fields.

Reinhard Burger, president of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s national disease control centre, said the pattern of the outbreak had produced enough evidence to draw that conclusion even though no tests on sprouts from an organic farm in Lower Saxony had come back positive for the E coli strain behind the outbreak.

“In this way, it was possible to narrow down epidemiologically the cause of the outbreak of the illness to the consumption of sprouts,” Burger told reporters at a press conference with the heads of Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment and its Federal Office for Consumer Protection. “It is the sprouts.”

The breakthrough came after an expert team from the three institutes linked separate clusters of patients who had fallen sick to 26 restaurants and cafeterias that had received produce from the organic farm.

“It was like a crime thriller where you have to find the bad guy,” said Helmut Tschiersky-Schoeneburg of the consumer protection agency.

“They even studied the menus, the ingredients, looked at bills and took pictures of the different meals, which they then showed to those who had fallen ill,” said Andreas Hensel, head of the risk assessment agency.

Burger said all the tainted sprouts may have either been consumed or thrown away by now but warned that the crisis is not yet over and people should still not eat sprouts.

Authorities, however, were lifting the warning against eating cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce. “Lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers should be eaten again — it is all healthy produce,” Hensel said.

Russia agreed to lift its ban on European vegetable imports and Andres Gongora, leader of the Spanish farm association COAG, hoped confidence in Spanish produce would return.