Brussels, 10/06/2011 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission breathed a sigh of relief on Friday 10 June, when the German sanitary authorities released from any suspicion raw vegetables, which had been unfairly condemned in the food poisoning epidemic that has been imputed to the E.coli bacterium, which has taken a heavy toll (30 deaths in Europe: 29 in Germany and one in Sweden). The scheduled removal of the initial alert, right in the middle of the EU-Russia summit (see other article), has been a windfall.
On the other hand, due to concerns of taking all possible care, the Commission does not wish to get ahead of itself on the announcement of the same German authorities that bean sprouts from an organic farm in Lower Saxony now appear, due to an accumulation of clues, to be the most likely source of the contamination of the food chain. And with reason, this information which led Germany officially to exonerate cucumbers, lettuces and tomatoes, should be fully confirmed, according to the Commission. Frédéric Vincent, spokesperson to John Dalli, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, made this clear. “It seems that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But this has not yet been fully confirmed. The Commission has also noted that Germany has recalled all products. The Commission also welcomes the announcement by the German sanitary authorities that the recommendation not to consume cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce in Germany has been lifted, which shows that these European products are safe. According to the German information, there have been no exports to third countries” he told the press (our translation).
The German federal health monitoring institute said that consumers who had eaten bean sprouts were nine times more likely to suffer from bloody diarrhoea. In reply to a journalist who asked if epidemiological, rather than bacteriological, confirmation was enough to constitute scientific proof, the spokesman said: “Where the products are grown, no bacteria have been found. However, as several examples of similar epidemics around the world have shown, finding the source of the contamination can take time, and sometimes it is never found. It involves hundreds of people. It is virtually a police investigation. From a purely statistical point of view, everything points to that company south of Hamburg”. He said that Germany had not wasted any time in focusing initially on Spain. “All possible lines of investigation were followed by the Germans”, he stated.
The confederation of agricultural cooperatives in the EU, COPA-COGECA welcomed the announced lifting of German warnings against eating cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuces. They called for the lifting of the Russian embargo on the import of vegetables from the EU to be “immediate” and stated that “producers must be 100% compensated for their losses”. (A.N./fl/rt)