German Tests Link Bean Sprouts To E. Coli Outbreak

The BBC News website is reporting that new data released in Germany strongly suggests that locally produced bean sprouts were, as suspected, the source of the deadly E. coli outbreak.

It quotes Reinhard Burger, head of Germany's centre for disease control as saying:

"It's the bean sprouts. People who ate sprouts were nine times more likely to have bloody diarrhoea than those who did not.”

The BBC report adds:

“He warned that the outbreak, which has killed 29 people and sickened some 3,000, was not over.
It also generated a crisis for EU vegetable-growers, with Spanish cucumber producers wrongly blamed for the contamination.

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.”

Further information can be gathered direct from the Robert Koch Institute

Source: BBC News

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