[mikemike]

I was harassing one of my coworkers whose originally from Slovakia about the story on the radio regarding the e.coli outbreak and how Germany originally pointed their finger at Spain but eventually Spain proved them wrong and now Germany is saying they may never know the source of the outbreak. I said that in the US, the CDC might say we don't know where it came from yet but they can always figure it out eventually. I said that this will probably result in a call for tighter integration and more centralized control over this kind of stuff in the EU, which got him off on a predictable (for him) anti-EU rant which ended with a conspiracy theory that the outbreak was a planned pretense for tighter integration.

[Ratmagiclady]

I was harassing one of my coworkers whose originally from Slovakia about the story on the radio regarding the e.coli outbreak and how Germany originally pointed their finger at Spain but eventually Spain proved them wrong and now Germany is saying they may never know the source of the outbreak. I said that in the US, the CDC might say we don't know where it came from yet but they can always figure it out eventually. I said that this will probably result in a call for tighter integration and more centralized control over this kind of stuff in the EU, which got him off on a predictable (for him) anti-EU rant which ended with a conspiracy theory that the outbreak was a planned pretense for tighter integration.

Pretty thin, really: Though I suppose having more EU-based food safety would indeed be 'tighter integration' in a sense, I doubt it's too much of a hard sell that way: it's the kind of thing that Europeean nations actually made the EU because of: not having to argue the local interests on each side of each border to accomplish these things.

The radio news said that it appears this is some kind of hybrid of two more-common strains of e coli, (How that happens naturally, I don't know, will have to ask my sweetie. ) and it happens to produce more of the toxic byproducts that are what make e coli poisonous. It's possible the stuff just slipped through some existing inspection standards, ....German scientists seem to be of the opinion they might never actually be able to determine where the stuff came from.

[GeneV]

These things happen here as well. I remember the spinach issues a while back. The difference is the virulence of this new strain.

I'm pretty clueless as to how one regulates to protect against raw vegetable contamination.

[reeftool]

It's difficult. I expect to hear a lot of these stories in the US this year as the heavy rains and flooding will raise the chances of contamination getting into the soil and crops. Another good reason to have a garden of your own.

[mikemike]

These things happen here as well. I remember the spinach issues a while back. The difference is the virulence of this new strain.

I'm pretty clueless as to how one regulates to protect against raw vegetable contamination.

e.coli on veggies indicates fecal contamination

Whenever stuff like that happens here, the CDC is able to trace back from doctors who report infections to find patient, interview the patients them to find out what they ate, find the suspects, go back to where they got the food, go back to the resturaunt or store's supplier, go back to their supplier, and so on all the way back to the field if necessary to find the source of contamination and issue guidance to avoid future outbreaks.

[Talisker]

e.coli on veggies indicates fecal contamination

Whenever stuff like that happens here, the CDC is able to trace back from doctors who report infections to find patient, interview the patients them to find out what they ate, find the suspects, go back to where they got the food, go back to the resturaunt or store's supplier, go back to their supplier, and so on all the way back to the field if necessary to find the source of contamination and issue guidance to avoid future outbreaks.

Nothing unique to CDC in that - standard outbreak investigation that most countries with a public health infrastructure do on a regular basis. The issue is that even with case control studies it isn't always possible to determine the food vector, assuming its not an environmental contaminant - E. coli causes outbreaks associated with visiting farms and handling animals - like you say its normally fecal contamination of something. Could happen in the US as easily as Germany or elsewhere. There but for the grace of god (except I'm a non-believer!)

The Germans jumped the gun by going public before they had completed strain typing, but given the number of cases and severity of infection, the presures must be enormous

[GeneV]

e.coli on veggies indicates fecal contamination

Whenever stuff like that happens here, the CDC is able to trace back from doctors who report infections to find patient, interview the patients them to find out what they ate, find the suspects, go back to where they got the food, go back to the resturaunt or store's supplier, go back to their supplier, and so on all the way back to the field if necessary to find the source of contamination and issue guidance to avoid future outbreaks.

Thanks. I seem to recall on the spinach issue that there were a few wrong turns here as well.

[jolepp]

Local reports have it that they are still trying to trace it to a specific batch of veggies; it apparently takes a few days to test a sample and they are waiting for results.

The EU food standards/regulations are quite extensive already. This is a part of the common market; getting politically more integrated, as in having a common foreign policy is another matter.

[Ratmagiclady]

I guess in this case, incidentally, it's apparently turned out not to necessarily have anything to do with food crossing national borders, anyway: I caught on the news that whatever happened, it came from within Germany, and that's where the cases are, so unless overall EU standards apply there, that's what that is.

Edit: No, wait, that's not what the story is, either. Mea culpa: I was relying on the closed captions when I watched the earlier show (Loud air conditioner) and missed a key paragraph there: there are in fact cases all around, and they still haven't ruled our any origins of it.

[jolepp]

In most outbreaks, the victims are children because they have not developed the immune system to fight off the food poisoning - but in the German case, it is adults and female adults, in particular.

BBC News - E. coli outbreak in Germany: Women more affected

[mikemike]

Nothing unique to CDC in that

I don't think any european equivalent of the CDC would ever be able to approach the CDC's efficiency and effectiveness simply because at best I don't see the EU ever becoming anything more organized and powerful than a confederation while the CDC benefits from being an agency at the federal level when fighting a problem mired by interstate commerce and parochial interests. In the EU local political forces from Country B will always be able to provide a greater degree of shielding from EU bodies if farmers or food processors in Country B cause a problem which mainly affected people in Country A.

[Ratmagiclady]

I don't think any european equivalent of the CDC would ever be able to approach the CDC's efficiency and effectiveness simply because at best I don't see the EU ever becoming anything more organized and powerful than a confederation while the CDC benefits from being an agency at the federal level when fighting a problem mired by interstate commerce and parochial interests. In the EU local political forces from Country B will always be able to provide a greater degree of shielding from EU bodies if farmers or food processors in Country B cause a problem which mainly affected people in Country A.

Quite possibly, though they do also have some advantages, as well, whereas the CDC's somewhat hobbled by under-funded enforcement and corporate interests in different ways than I imagine the EU is: Nothing's perfect. I'm not quite sure how they break it down between agriculture and disease issues, when there's overlap, but it's a place where they could probably actually use some of the areas where they're different: someone was quick to blame Spanish organic farmers which turned out to not have been true, but there's also things they could *use* to their system. Like, OK, close some borders while things are figured out. Obviously, there's drawbacks, there, too. But the real question's how it's managed.

[paperbag846]

I'm not an expert, but my hope is that we will learn from these errors and smaller, local food producers will begin profiting again. For too long we have expected more, too much, for our dollar, and demanded impossible things like lettuce in the wintertime. Free trade means our cheap, wintertime lettuce comes from one central place - the lowest bidder.

More importantly this lowest bidder sends his/her food out across the planet... making outbreaks like this an inevitability and very hard to track / control.

I'm sorry for getting all activist on you people but we all need to stop paying these people's salaries. We vote with our dollars every day, and we often elect people who are happy to poison us to make an extra 2%.

[magkelly]

It's not so odd in this case that it is female adults. Young women tend to eat far more salads, usually for weight control purposes as well as nutrition. A lot of men eat healthy, but they don't eat salad for lunch a lot all the time like a lot of women do. Men will eat salad for dinner, usually if it's on the table, but most men I know, unless they're vegan, they tend to eat more regular cooked veggies than salad stuff.

Kids aren't usually salad freaks either, not until they're a bit older. They may eat the odd raw carrot, but it's a rare non-vegan kid that eats raw veggies to the point of eating an actual salad's worth. A lot of kids I've seen, they won't even touch a tomato till they're practically in grade school, and darker lettuces are something they usually try to slip to the dog. (Carrots most of them like raw because they are sweet veggies.) You have your exceptions to the rule of course, but it can actually take a child's taste buds a while to grow into being able to appreciate certain foods.

Salads make an easy, cool, lunch particularly in Summer. A lot of women get tired and hot and all they want to eat is a salad. A man will do that too, if someone else makes a salad, but usually there's something from the grill beside it. The guys I've met that live on them? They either eschew meat entirely Or they have gotten to be major foodies and will eat fancy gourmet salads as an epicurean thing. I do have an amateur chef friend who eats salad all the time but that's because he puts everything but the kitchen sink into them when he makes one!

The rest of my male friends? The men in my family. In summer I practically have to force them to eat anything that isn't a fried or baked potato, or corn on the cob off the grill. If I can get them to add a few tomatoes or some zucchini to all the meat grilling I consider it a job well done. We all get together for a party, either Mike or I brings a salad, that's fine, everyone wants some, but if the rest of the guys actually have to make one, that's just too much work, usually...

They need to start checking the kinds of salads the women eat as fast food if you ask me. They're talking about cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce as separate items but I have yet to hear about them checking and recalling mixed up salads in bags, or prepped ones in stores and eateries. A lot of women start with those bags or plastic containers of lettuce and stuff and then just add in what they like. Could be it's not those veggies, but what they're mixed with, that's gotten contaminated.

We had a similar thing with the bagged lettuce happen here in the USA a couple of years ago. Bagged salads, greens and spinach. They finally traced it back to one area in CA and an organic farm's fertilizer runoff. It also hit the strawberries in one area there about a year later, for the same reason. Cows in the next pasture, and rain....

[rhodopsin]

I was harassing one of my coworkers [...]

say what?