The BBC confirms that the source of the E.coli outbreak is exactly where we all expected, i.e. in the same place as where all the people fell ill.
My favourite bit of the article is this:
The BBC's Stephen Evans in Berlin says the announcement may cause embarrassment to German authorities, who had earlier pointed to Spanish farms as the source of the outbreak.
German authorities don't do embarrassment, I think you'll find, no matter how wrong they were.
What have we wrought in the UK?
5 hours ago
5 comments:
I liked the bit where they said there was a 'clear trail of evidence...'
No prizes for guessing what the trail looked like
(or rather, smelled like)
I can't see it being beansprouts as the vector. afterall, you do not use any kind of fertilizer, organic or inorganic. You just wet them and germinate them on moist absorbent in a try and there you have them. if the water was infected that's another matter. But it still means a source. And for a new strain. That means a gut somewhere or the outpouring of the same.
tray
It really is time we irradiated food - the people with superstitions about it have been humoured quite long enough.
I am still not entirely convinced that this is the whole story. From my own experience of bacteriology, I would suggest that to get them growing nicely, E coli need more nutrients than are to be found on the outside of a sprouting bean, where the bugs would just sit quietly waiting for their food. I suspect that something like mayonnaise dressing is involved too, and they would need to be in a warmish place for a few hours.
All of which sounds as if there could also be broader issues of hygiene in the places where food is being prepared, going beyond this particular epidemic.
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