| ■ Germany: Sprouts cause of E. coli outbreak | 2011.06.10 |
| Investigators have determined that locally grown vegetable sprouts are the cause of the European E. coli outbreak that has killed 29 and sickened nearly 3,000, the head of Germany's national disease control center said Friday. Robert Koch Institute president Reinhard Burger said even though no tests of the sprouts from a farm in Lower Saxony had come back positive for the E. coli strain behind the outbreak, the investigation of the pattern of the outbreak had produced enough evidence to draw the conclusion. "In this way it was possible to narrow down epidemiologically the cause of the outbreak of the illness to the consumption of sprouts," Burger said at a joint press conference with heads of Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment and Federal Office for Consumer Protection. |