Sprouts Appear to be E. Coli Culprit

Hessen, Germany


German health officials said they had finally determined the source of the outbreak, which began in early May. Interviews with patients, restaurants and suppliers allowed investigators to whittle their list of suspects down to bean sprouts grown on an organic farm in Lower Saxony, near the village of Bienenbuettel

In the last 15 years, there have been at least 30 disease outbreaks (mostly of salmonella and E. coli) traced back to sprouts in the U.S. None were as severe as the 1996 outbreaks in Japan, in which E. coli sickened about 12,000 people--tainted radish sprouts were the likely cause.




From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Escherichia coli (commonly abbreviated E. coli; named after Theodor Escherich) is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium that is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms (endotherms). Most E. coli strains are harmless, but some serotypes can cause serious food poisoning in humans, and are occasionally responsible for product recalls. The harmless strains are part of the normal flora of the gut, and can benefit their hosts by producing vitamin K2, and by preventing the establishment of pathogenic bacteria within the intestine.




A battered Germany recovers from E. coli outbreak