German health officials said Thursday that cucumbers
imported from Spain was one source of a recent deadly E. coli outbreak
in northern states that killed three people and made hundreds sick.
The Hamburg Institute for Hygiene and the Environment (HU) found
that four cucumbers in a local market were contaminated by
Enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), and three of them were imported from
two separate Spanish suppliers, Hamburg state health authorities said.
The origin of the fourth cucumber was still under investigation, officials added.
German supermarkets began to pull Spanish cucumbers off shelves
Thursday afternoon following the findings in Hamburg. The food-
monitoring agencies in the northern states were launching
investigations on vegetable markets, the federal agriculture ministry
said in a statement.
Figures showed that Spain is Germany's second largest supplier of
cucumbers within the European Union, accounting for some 40 percent of
the country's cucumber imports.
Scientists said that EHEC is a virulent strain of gut bacterium that
can cause severe stomach upsets, diarrhea, stroke and coma. It would
lead to kidney failure in extreme cases.
Germany saw a terrible E. coli outbreak two weeks ago, starting from
the northern states like Hamburg and then spreading to eastern and
southern regions. German health authorities said that at least three
people have died from infections, and more than 200 have been diagnosed
with hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS), which is caused by EHEC.
Germany's national disease centre, the Robert Koch Institute,
suggest people avoid eating raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce for a
while. Xinhua
