"Germany E. coli Outbreak One of Largest on Record"

Kuko 4000

Graduate Poster
Kuko 4000
Joined
Mar 2, 2008
Messages
1,586
5 people have died in Germany and hundreds have gotten very ill.

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/05/germany-e-coli-outbreak-one-of-largest-on-record/

"Germany E. coli Outbreak One of Largest on Record

The source: Organic cucumbers imported from two provinces of Spain (Almeria and Malaga) have been confirmed by German authorities as one source of the outbreak. A third batch of cucumbers from the Netherlands is under investigation. How the cucumbers became contaminated is unknown."
Click to expand...


Anyone have more info on this? Why were the cucumbers contaminated?
 
Just prior to harvesting, water them with contaminated water. That should do the job. I am no cucumberist so it's only a guess
 
I live in Germany and so follow this somewhat. It's headline news, of course.
As far as I know that is all the info there is. It's a good summary.
 
I knew it.Those green leafy vegetables are deadly.

You wouldn't eat meat if it was that color would you? ;)
 
There's 10 confirmed deaths now. I live in the hotspot, and it troubles me how people react to the whole thing. Many panic, become afraid. 10 people have died for Pete's sake. That is a tiny bit more than 1% of the infected. We have 15.000 flu deaths every year. Nobody panics.

One thing that particulary troubles me, is that whenever I go to apparently any German news site (I'm talking the big ones, not tabloid level), the comments (and yes, I know, don't ever read internet comments...) are completely brainless. Even more troubling is, that on every page there's at least one conspiracy theory about anything. So there is an outbreak of E coli. The logical assumption is that it is some sort of conspiracy? WTF? These comments get tens of thumbs ups. And almost no thumbs down. While any reasonable comment will get thumbed down rather quickly. I just read a comment by someone that was pretty sure it's a bio weapon attack. By the Taleban. He also questioned, whether the bacteria was natural. He got 10 TU, 1 TD. This seems to happen with anything, particulary politics. It's extreme mistrust, that seems to be the standart for the average German citizen. What's happened to society? Are people really this stupid?:mad:
 
Greedo said:
One thing that particulary troubles me, is that whenever I go to apparently any German news site (I'm talking the big ones, not tabloid level), the comments (and yes, I know, don't ever read internet comments...) are completely brainless. Even more troubling is, that on every page there's at least one conspiracy theory about anything. So there is an outbreak of E coli. The logical assumption is that it is some sort of conspiracy? WTF? These comments get tens of thumbs ups. And almost no thumbs down. While any reasonable comment will get thumbed down rather quickly. I just read a comment by someone that was pretty sure it's a bio weapon attack. By the Taleban. He also questioned, whether the bacteria was natural. He got 10 TU, 1 TD. This seems to happen with anything, particulary politics. It's extreme mistrust, that seems to be the standart for the average German citizen. What's happened to society? Are people really this stupid?:mad:
Click to expand...

No. It happens on US sites too. The loonies spend their time commenting and arguing, and come out in big numbers. They drown out the voices of reason.

A major US news source (CBS) recently published an absurd story about autism and vaccines, based on an already debunked paper that was crap. I commented, along with a few others, with links back to reliable scientific sources. But I, along with the other scientists, were vastly outnumbered by the lunatic fringe who posted junk science, along with Big Pharma and others in medicine involved in a conspiracy to mislead or harm the public.

It was a gaggle of Gish Gallop garbage.
 
Must be all that organic "fertilizer", seeing as E. coli lives in an animals intestines.

Uk (according to the Daily Snail) has a few cases too, also tomatoes appear to be perhaps problematic too.

My wild "pullin it outa my rear end (;) lol gettit? )" hypothesis is that both these plants contain a high water content, and as E.coli is not exclusively a surface contaminant in the plants either, that organic "fertilizer" rather than the good 'ol NPK variety might be a factor. You dont get E.coli from NPK. this might be dependant on the application times before harvest also.

However handling can also be a propogator of E.Coli too.

I wouldn't touch "organic" food with your bargepole, never mind my own...for just this reason.
 
Reuters via MSNBC
updated 5/29/2011 10:04:38 AM ET
(...)
German officials said on Thursday they suspected cucumbers imported from Spain were the possible source of the outbreak.
Smaller numbers of cases have been reported in Austria, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain, and all of the cases have been linked with travel to Germany.
Click to expand...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43206456/ns/health/
 
Wash your food before you eat it. Barring leafy greens, which are a real pain in the butt to get clean, this pretty much eliminates the problems with E. coli and such.

I found some very common mistakes (dunno that they're mistakes really, but I can't think of a better word) in the article that seem to crop up every time an outbreak occurs.

Generally, only 10 percent of E. coli patients develop HUS ... some reports put the figure at nearly 50 percent of the overall cases. This suggests that the German E. coli may be capable of of producing high levels of toxins, making it especially deadly.
Click to expand...

The implication is that they know of all of the cases. How many people are heaving up their guts at home that nobody knows about? It could be much worse than the normal version, but unless there is exceedingly good reporting it's hard to tell.

E. coli infections are usually hard on two demographic groups -- the very young and the very old. ... But Germany's outbreak has been extraordinary in that it has affected mostly middle-aged women -- a group that typically is not susceptible to the bug. And nobody seems to know why.
Click to expand...

I've got a good guess. Do middle aged women buy and consume organic cucumbers at a greater rate than similar aged men, children, or elderly? This seems incredibly likely to me... Also, if German kids are anything like mine, they'll happily eat a peeled cucumber but don't like the skins. Taking off the peel would reduce the bacterial load substantially. It wouldn't surprise me if parents were more conscientious about washing their kids' food than their own as well.
 
biomorph said:
Must be all that organic "fertilizer", seeing as E. coli lives in an animals intestines.

Uk (according to the Daily Snail) has a few cases too, also tomatoes appear to be perhaps problematic too.

My wild "pullin it outa my rear end (;) lol gettit? )" hypothesis is that both these plants contain a high water content, and as E.coli is not exclusively a surface contaminant in the plants either, that organic "fertilizer" rather than the good 'ol NPK variety might be a factor. You dont get E.coli from NPK. this might be dependant on the application times before harvest also.

However handling can also be a propogator of E.Coli too.

I wouldn't touch "organic" food with your bargepole, never mind my own...for just this reason.
Click to expand...

Is nonsense your specialty?

I have found E.Coli (500-600 cfu per gram) in conventionally grown wheat bran just the other day.

Its a big problem and its not unique to organic farming.
 
!Kaggen said:
Is nonsense your specialty?
Click to expand...
Is that the best you can do? thats water off a ducks back to me matey. Even if nonsense was my speciality it I don't see that it raises the credibility of your comments much. I don't see the need for that sort of comment, unless you really don't have a real point to make.

I have found E.Coli (500-600 cfu per gram) in conventionally grown wheat bran just the other day.
Click to expand...

So? whats your point? You should wash your hands before contaminating your samples.

You could have found it on the moon, it still doesn't make organic (whatever that is?) food products more safe.
Its a big problem
Click to expand...

not in conventionally grown cucumbers, it seems.....lol.

and its not unique to organic farming.
Click to expand...


I didn't say it was or wasn't, you can leave your logical fallacies at the door next time.
 
biomorph said:
Is that the best you can do? thats water off a ducks back to me matey. Even if nonsense was my speciality it I don't see that it raises the credibility of your comments much. I don't see the need for that sort of comment, unless you really don't have a real point to make.



So? whats your point? You should wash your hands before contaminating your samples.

You could have found it on the moon, it still doesn't make organic (whatever that is?) food products more safe.


not in conventionally grown cucumbers, it seems.....lol.




I didn't say it was or wasn't, you can leave your logical fallacies at the door next time.
Click to expand...

yeah and their Antibiotic resistance is surely to blame on Organic farming.... :rolleyes:
 
biomorph said:
!Kaggen said:
Is nonsense your specialty?
Click to expand...
Is that the best you can do? thats water off a ducks back to me matey. Even if nonsense was my speciality it I don't see that it raises the credibility of your comments much. I don't see the need for that sort of comment, unless you really don't have a real point to make.
Click to expand...

Ever heard that correlation does not equal causation?

biomorph said:
!Kaggen said:
I have found E.Coli (500-600 cfu per gram) in conventionally grown wheat bran just the other day.
Click to expand...

So? whats your point? You should wash your hands before contaminating your samples.
Click to expand...
Exactly, you do realize this is what could of happened to the organic cucumbers?

biomorph said:
You could have found it on the moon, it still doesn't make organic (whatever that is?) food products more safe.
Click to expand...

When did I say that?


biomorph said:
!Kaggen said:
Its a big problem
Click to expand...

not in conventionally grown cucumbers, it seems.....lol.
Click to expand...

Correlation causation error again.

biomorph said:
!Kaggen said:
and its not unique to organic farming.
Click to expand...


I didn't say it was or wasn't, you can leave your logical fallacies at the door next time.
Click to expand...

You made it very clear that organic fertilizer was the only explanation and you would not touch organic food with a "bargepole".

Your welcome to retract your statements with "I don't know the cause"
 
Last edited:
Looks like the cucumbers were a red herring.

The bacterial type on the cucumbers has been identified and does not match the type causing the outbreak.
 
GnaGnaMan said:
Looks like the cucumbers were a red herring.

The bacterial type on the cucumbers has been identified and does not match the type causing the outbreak.
Click to expand...

Do you have a source?

E. coli outbreak: blame game delays common response
May 31, 2011
(...)
Germany's Hamburg Institute for Hygiene and the Environment last week was the first to report that organic cucumbers grown in southern Spain, one of Europe’s biggest breadbaskets, were contaminated.

But Spain has reacted angrily, saying that there is no evidence that Spain is the source, even if the cucumbers originated there, because they could have been contaminated anywhere along the supply and handling chain.
(...)
Indeed, while the European Union said a batch of contaminated produce was detected in the Spanish provinces of Almeria and Malaga, a separate one from either Denmark or the Netherlands – also sent through Germany – is now being investigated, suggesting that the contamination could be in the handling, not the production.

“All hypotheses are still open. But the fact that it appears that there are contaminated cucumbers from other places, like the Netherlands and Denmark, suggest a different origin of the bacteria,” said Roberto Sabrido, the head of the Spanish food safety agency, in an interview in a Spanish newspaper Monday.
(...)
German Health Minister Daniel Bahr said Monday that the source still hasn’t been identified.
Click to expand...

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0531/E.-coli-outbreak-blame-game-delays-common-response
 
GnaGnaMan said:
Looks like the cucumbers were a red herring.

The bacterial type on the cucumbers has been identified and does not match the type causing the outbreak.
Click to expand...
nvm

You be CTist? If so @EHEC CTers, do consider this: If they™ unleashed the disease, then why not stick to a story? Jumping from one source to another causes more suspicion. Teh mind of a CTist, truly peculiar.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom