tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
European health officials tested more than 10,000 samples of food but never found any contaminated with the deadly E. coli O104:H4 that has caused nearly 4,000 illnesses and at least 44 deaths in the outbreaks in France and Germany linked to Egyptian fenugreek sprouting seeds.
A final report from the EHEC Task Force of the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) said "it is very difficult to detect low STEC (Shiga toxin-producing E. coli) contamination level in seeds and sprouts and there is no validated method."
"To find the source of the EHEC outbreak was very difficult," acknowledged Dr. Helmut Tschiersky-Sch?neburg, president of BVL, in an e-mailed statement to Food Safety News. "This was on the one hand due to the fact that EHEC bacteria have a very long incubation period, and on the other hand to the fact that sprouts have a very short shelf life."
The task force, assembled in early June after initial efforts to find the source of the outbreak were unsuccessful, said that with this lack of contaminated-product evidence, "The only way out [was to] intensify the investigation on tracing back and tracing forward."
As Bill Keene, senior epidemiologist at the Oregon Department of Health pointed out in an interview with Food Safety News last month, "Food testing, generally, and certainly in this case, can be extremely corroborative in supporting epidemiology if you get a positive result. If you get negative results, they essentially mean next to nothing. They don't rule it out, but they don't say anything."
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http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/07/outbreak-german-task-forces-final-report/
A final report from the EHEC Task Force of the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) said "it is very difficult to detect low STEC (Shiga toxin-producing E. coli) contamination level in seeds and sprouts and there is no validated method."
"To find the source of the EHEC outbreak was very difficult," acknowledged Dr. Helmut Tschiersky-Sch?neburg, president of BVL, in an e-mailed statement to Food Safety News. "This was on the one hand due to the fact that EHEC bacteria have a very long incubation period, and on the other hand to the fact that sprouts have a very short shelf life."
The task force, assembled in early June after initial efforts to find the source of the outbreak were unsuccessful, said that with this lack of contaminated-product evidence, "The only way out [was to] intensify the investigation on tracing back and tracing forward."
As Bill Keene, senior epidemiologist at the Oregon Department of Health pointed out in an interview with Food Safety News last month, "Food testing, generally, and certainly in this case, can be extremely corroborative in supporting epidemiology if you get a positive result. If you get negative results, they essentially mean next to nothing. They don't rule it out, but they don't say anything."
...
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/07/outbreak-german-task-forces-final-report/