Spanish organic cucumbers....

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

Anyone else feeling less than confident about the organic cucumber from Spain sitting in their fridge following this story about v nasty e-coli problems in Germany and Czech Rep?

No, still a mystery.

FAZ states: Das EU-Expertengremium teilte mit, außer den Fällen in Deutschland seien bisher folgende Ehec-Erkrankungen nachgewiesen worden: Schweden 41 (davon 15 Hus), Dänemark 14 (davon 6 Hus), Frankreich 6 Ehec-Fälle, Großbritannien 3 Fälle (davon 2 Hus), Niederlande 7 (davon 3 Hus) und Österreich 2 Ehec-Fälle. In den meisten Fällen handele es sich um Personen, die kurz zuvor in Deutschland gewesen seien

Sweden: 41 cases
Denmark: 14
France: 6
Uk: 3
Holland: 7
Austria: 2

In most of the cases the people had been in Germany shortly before.

Now 470 cases in Germany, with 16 dead.

"Their efficiency does not seem to be just a stereotype"

If they were really efficient they would have worked out were it was coming from instead of wrongly accusing Spanish farmers.

bild now reporting that there has been a sharp increase in cases in Germany.

Are they only reporting the severe cases with HUS Mmelindor? as the Robert Koch Institute are reporting 1064 cases with 470 developing HUS (a huge percentage of those seeking help developing complications)

oh gosh, so either they've not found the cause or there is quite efficient secondary transmission :(

They wrote that they are the confirmed cases. Perhaps the others are the possible cases.

Interesting. I was reading their latest report but as I've got google to translate it I might be completely misunderstanding. After all a bit from the Bild translated as:
"Because of the spread of the dangerous germ EHEC there is the Protestant Church in Dresden or cucumbers or tomatoes.
Even lettuce would not be at the food stalls at the five-day meeting Protestants available, said CEO Hartwig Bodmann church day."

Oh, that was about the Kirchentag - is synod in English? I did wonder why they thought it necessary to report that they were eating sandwiches without salad or tomatoes.

Will read your link and see if I can get more details.

Oh ok! Synod would be a good replacement word.

No, you understood correctly. I cannot access bild.de on the iPad (dc are on moshimonsters website) but iirc they were reporting less. Or were they?

I think Bild were just reporting those who have gone on to develop HUS which is a severe complication of this infection

Ah, yes. The map is just HUS infected patients.

this might interest you

Thank you :) I'll have a good read of that tomorrow.

oh gosh. Guardian says WHO are saying it is a brand new strain.

bbc report

This statement seems quite carefully worded:

"Aphaluck Bhatiasevi, a WHO spokesperson, is reported as saying: "This strain has never been seen in an outbreak situation before.""

Interesting report about feeding milk cows a mix of hay, grain, soya etc. This means that the cows produce more milk that those fed hay or grass, but are possibly more likely to develop E Coli (and pass on to humans if the dung is used as fertiliser). Report in German, but that is the gist of it.

I ordered my veg box today, from the farmer beyond the hedge. And will be looking into buying more local food.

Intensive farming :(

We buy locally as much as we can. Going to get quite tricky though as crops are failing here due to the lack of rain (are you in a similar position?). Hay is going to be one thing that is very tricky this winter.

SKY are reporting 7 cases of this strain in UK, all of whom have a direct connexion with Germany.

Dr Hugh Pennington has said that in a typical EColi outbreak, you would except around 20% of cases to be secondary (person to person) transmission, but this typically required close contact (eg within families) or via small children who might still be learning personal hygiene.

have a feeling the cause when they discover it will turn out to be something very different from raw vegetables. The Robert Koch Institut would have found it out already otherwise IMO.

You could be right, Z.

We have had a lot of rain these past few days, but that was the first for weeks. I heard that there were hosepipe bans in some areas of Switzerland, but when we were in the mountains last week there were sprinklers on the fields of grass.

From what I have seen of Switzerland, it tends to be smaller farms, not the huge industrialised farms that are in other larger countries. I am trying to buy local as much as possible now and think that many others are going to follow suit.

I think that the Swiss will likely not have so much problems with this (aside from perhaps in the area where folk travel to Germany to shop as it is cheaper). The Swiss tend to buy more locally, from their farmer markets etc.

Now it seems that organic cucumbers aren't to blame. Amazing how organic gets the blame again. The EU media seem to love to knock organic,possibly because all the benefits seem just too good to be true. Interestingly some research out today suggests that MRSA is being transmitted from dairy animals to humans because of over use of antibiotics by (non-organic) farmers. Bet we won't see that in the news!