E Coli Killer Vegetables infect Germany

Captain Kremmen said:
An infected water supply would be a better bet.
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Especially when you consider that a bean sprout farm would likely use a Closed loop water system, where the water is cycled without being replaced or cleaned out as often as it likely should.

To break it down, Bean sprouts/shoots when grown in their native climate will likely use rain water and be grown outside. Due to the costs of transportation and the time taken to transport such food sources, it can be implied that it was seen financially viable to grow bean sprouts more locally to the end market to reduce delivery time and increase freshness. (unless of course kept in a closed loop system.)

It's not the first German production problem however, there was also the Dioxin absorption by poultry earlier this year. While these are two different events, it could bring into question whether the Food chain is purposely being sabotaged or not, currently of course two incidents that are generally unconnected can be identified as being "Coincidental".
 
Our national television and radio service is paying close attention to the E. Coli outbreak in Germany as we have a lot of tourists from that country.

Dr. Brendan Hanley, Yukon's chief medical officer of health, said he alerted doctors and nurses in the territory last week to watch for symptoms of E. coli among patients.

People who are visiting Yukon from Germany this summer, or travellers returning from that country, could be affected, he said.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/story/2011/06/07/yukon-ecoli-watch.html
 
The incompetence of the Germans in the whole scenario is remarkable.

They tried to pin it on Spanish cucumbers, with no evidence.
Probably a Billion Euro of crops destroyed as a result.

What happened to their super efficiency?
 
Investigators have said German-grown bean sprouts are the cause of the E coli outbreak that has killed 29 people, the head of Germany's national disease control centre announced on Friday.

Reinhard Burger, the president of the Robert Koch Institute, which is responsible for disease control and prevention in Germany, said there was enough evidence to draw the conclusion even though no sprouts from an organic farm in Lower Saxony had tested positive for the E coli strain.

"It was possible to narrow down epidemiologically the cause of the outbreak of the illness to the consumption of sprouts," Burger said at a news conference. "It is the sprouts."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/10/e-coli-bean-sprouts-blamed

That is.
They found no bacteria at the farms, but there was an overwhelming statistical connection to same farms.

To be fair to the Koch institute, their apparent indecision is down to a scientist's legitimate reticence to come to a definite conclusion.
There is a very tiny possibility that the sprouts were not to blame.

Scientific caution aside. It's the sprouts wot dun it. No question.
If it was in a court of law, the sprouts would hang.
 
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Stryder said:
Especially when you consider that a bean sprout farm would likely use a Closed loop water system, where the water is cycled without being replaced or cleaned out as often as it likely should.
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This is typical:

http://www.sproutnet.com/Encore_bean_sprout_water_recycler.htm

This is what this company says out pathogens:

Starting with the Seed

There have been many pathogen outbreaks throughout the world involving sprouts. Several people have died, and over 7,000 have been hospitalized from eating contaminated sprouts. The main problem is that seed coming from a field may have come in contact with animal waste. Animal waste can harbor the dangerous and sometimes lethal bacteria E.coli 0157:H7 and Salmonella, as well as other pathogens. The prefect environment for sprouting is nearly ideal for the growth of pathogens. Each Salmonella cell will grow to about 100,000 cells in 48 hours.

No reasonable method of decontaminating the seed is 100% safe, so there are several steps that need to be taken in order to insure you have safe sprouts. The first being to buy seed in which precautions have been made to reduce the risk of contamination.

Your seed needs to be stored in a clean warehouse or area free from rodents, insects and moisture. If you are going to store the seed for any length of time, the area should have a low humidity and maintain a low temperature.

Having purchased “safe” seed that is properly stored, you need to sanitize the seed before sprouting it. This is in case a pathogen was missed by the supplier in the seed screening process.

The most effective way of sanitizing the seed is by dousing it in calcium hypochlorite for ten minutes and rinsing it off. We have manual equipment for small growers and fully automated equipment for larger growers.

The seed is then placed in growing bins and the bins are placed in a growing room precisely built to control the environment.
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Guess they will have to update the part about the number of deaths from bean sprouts.

This is the section on sanitizing seeds:

One of the most important steps in growing sprouts is proper seed sanitizing and soaking. This is critical for three reasons:

To kill human pathogens such as E.coli 0157:H7 and Salmonella.
To kill plant pathogens that can destroy crops.
To get even germination, leading to higher yielding, more consistent productions.

the programmable controls allow you to select the number and type of cleaning and sanitizing cycles including surfactants, heat, sanitizers and ozone, along with the agitation and duration of the soak cycle you prefer
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http://www.sproutnet.com/sprouting_seed_soaking.htm

So just by looking at the process, there are any number of ways that the pathogen could have got past a process as automated as this, including just a friggin programming error.

Note: I have no idea what actual equipment or procedures were in use at the farm in Saxony, just showing the type of automation that is available to medium to large scale sprout farms.

Arthur
 
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The German investigative system really blew it !!!!

(NOTE: This is NOT just the opinion of an American who is criticizing the German system, the German press has been scathing according to the link I'm about to provide.)

According to this news article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4338447...y/t/german-shortcomings-focus-outbreak-wanes/

the system is antiquated, fragmented among numerous state and federal agencies, exceptionally slow and not coordinated at all. One clear example of how backward it is, is that despite moderen means of communications (which have been around for a long time already) "hospitals' notifications of a serious illness still often wind their way to the national disease control center by conventional post." (That means ordinary SNAIL MAIL, folks.)

Also, a professor, Norman Noah, of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine points out a SERIOUS bit of TOTAL logic failure on the part of the investigators: "German officials have defended their warning on Spanish cucumbers, saying the vegetables were contaminated with a different strain of E. coli.

But Noah said it should have been clear that was the wrong trail.

"A big clue was that the outbreak was so localized in northern Germany, yet Spanish cucumbers are sold everywhere," he said. "That really did not fit." "

My point for posting this is hopefully they have learned something from their major blunders in this situation and will make some real efforts to improve their system.
 
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