LONDON - warm, aqueous and organic growing area suspected as the source of a deadly outbreak of e. coli in Germany can produce delicious, nutritious bean sprouts, but also ideal breeding ground for the dangerous bacteria.
Bean sprouts are often to the primary suspect in e. coli outbreaks around the world, and health experts say that it is no surprise the hunting according to source of the deadly strain the 22 people killed and more than 2,200 made sick, has led an organic bean farmers.
Some say the case raises questions about the future of organic farming methods.
"Bean sprouts are the cause of outbreaks on both sides of the Atlantic often." "They are very difficult, hygienic grow and you have not to them, contaminate so careful", said Paul Hunter, Professor of public health at the British University of East Anglia.
"And organic farms, with everything that they not with ordinary chemicals and inorganic fertilizer to bring, an additional risk to take."
Hunter said he personally bought organic fruits and vegetables, but clear controlled organic raw salad food "for exactly this reason."
The original source of the pollution in Germany is very likely to be fertilizer, farm slurry or feces of some sort, because Escherichia the Shiga toxin-producing coli or STEC in this outbreak are known to be in cattle guts can lurk.
Seeds
The farmer in the Center Germany outbreak has said he used no fertilizers, but scientists say that the contamination may have been, on or in the bean seeds itself in the water to the grow or have a worker handle the beans come.
And as soon as the mistake was that may have been perfectly to reproduce it.
Story: Scared of your salad? How to wash vegetables safely
"Bean sprouts often grow at high temperatures, 37 degrees (Celsius), and this is also the optimal growing temperature for E. coli so that it it quickly all traces of the times would allow," said Brendan Wren, microbiology Professor at the London School of hygiene and tropical medicine.
"It is a"perfect storm"-scenario." "It is rare and unlikely, but if all these events happen then the product could be rapidly contaminated."
Food poisoning cases associated with bean sprouts are not new.
In the United States in the year 1997 followed investigations into an outbreak of E. coli it back to alfalfa beans in Idaho harvested and then to the sprout.
Stephen Smith, Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the Ireland's Trinity College Dublin, said that previous research in laboratories has shown that a type, the life-threatening complication can bind hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, alfalfa sprouts of E. coli on the.
HUS often leads to kidney failure and was a major cause of death and serious illness in the German outbreak.
"E. coli can stick sprouts closely to the surface of the seed required, thus and... was resting on the seeds for months," said Smith. Then, during germination, "the population of bugs 100, 000-fold can expand."
Women aged 20-50 hit
The suspicion of bean sprouts are strengthened by the pattern of infection, which are all in or in connection with Germany, and the distinctive age and gender profile of the victims.
In Germany and Europe, as in the 1997 outbreak U.S. most of the infected women aged between 20 and 50, were a group not usually of e. coli outbreaks from other sources, the children and the elderly damage tends to be hit hard.
Young women, more than other groups, tend to be raw bean sprouts, they be healthy believe, say the scientists.
"The big question for the bean sprout industry, in particular the organic side", said Hunter.
"If you are this non-organic growing, you can they separate from feces in a way that poses a problem if you are using organic production methods." "Organic production of salad substances only as safe as inorganic methods may not."
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.
0 коммент.:
Post a Comment