Early tests: No E.coli in German sprouts

Berlin (CNN) -- No traces of the deadly E. coli bacteria have been found in initial tests at a German bean sprout farm suspected of being the source of the outbreak that has killed at least 22 people, agriculture officials in the state of Lower Saxony said Monday.

But authorities said they might not find any evidence of E. coli if it affected only a batch of bad sprouts and is no longer in the supply chain.

Test results are back for 20 of the 40 samples, Lower Saxony officials said Monday. It's not clear when the rest of the test results will be available.

On Sunday, officials said German-grown sprouts are the likely source for the E. coli outbreak.

Gert Lindemann, agricultural minister in Lower Saxony, said there is a "direct link" between a company in the town of Bienenbuettel and "these people getting sick." The firm has been shut down and its products have been recalled, Lindemann said.

It is not immediately clear how the E. coli strain may have gotten into the sprouts, officials said. No E. coli has been found in the company.

The company, Gaertnerhof, said Monday that it was recalling all products.

Gaertnerhof said in a statement it was "shocked and worried.... that part of our production has been linked to E.coli infections" and had never had a problem in its 25 years of growing sprouts.

It said it had found no evidence of E. coli during routine testing in January or during tests in response to the health scare in May.

But a leading German microbiologist said Monday that bean sprouts were a "plausible" source of the infection.

Sprouts can contain bacteria, which then spread in the growing process, said Alexander Kekule of the University of Halle-Wittenberg.

"Either it was inside the seed, which I do not think is the case, or the bacteria was inside the water," Kekule said on Germany's NDR radio. He is not working directly on the case.

Sprouts are bred in large drums that are heated to just over human body temperature. That is both the ideal temperature for sprouts and bacteria to grow, the agriculture ministry of Lower Saxony said.

Authorities say the infection may have taken place too long ago to be found at the company itself. But several restaurants and cafeterias linked to the outbreak got sprouts from the company, officials said.

Two workers at the agricultural company have come down with severe cases of diarrhea; in at least one of those cases, E. coli was the cause, Lindemann said.

Bienenbuettel is in the district of Uelzen in north-central Germany.

The outbreak of a virulent strain of E. coli has infected more than 2,200 people in at least 12 countries, European health authorities said Sunday.

All but one of the 22 fatalities were reported in Germany, where officials say it's too early to determine whether the peak of the outbreak has passed. One person in Sweden also died after visiting Germany.

Last week, Spain vehemently rejected suggestions that its cucumbers could be blamed, after the European Food Safety Alert Network said E. coli was found in organic cucumbers originating from Spain, packaged in Germany and distributed to various countries.

Authorities called for the cucumbers to be pulled from sale.

Germany later said Spanish produce was not the source of the infection, and furious Spanish farmers are now demanding hundreds of millions of euros in compensation from Germany.

Jose Maria Pozancos, the head of the Spanish fresh produce exporters group Fepex, wants Germany to apologize formally, pay Spanish farmers at least 400 million euros ($584 million) for their losses, and help Spain repair damaged consumer confidence.

Spanish produce exporters have seen a 40% decline in demand since the crisis began, Pozancos said.

In Germany, there have been 627 cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) -- a form of kidney failure -- in the current European outbreak, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. That's more cases of HUS than in any other recorded outbreak, worldwide.

Fifteen patients in Germany have died of HUS, according to the center, while six died of enterohemorrhagic E. coli, a strain that causes hemorrhaging in the intestines and can result in abdominal cramps and bloody diarrhea.

Reports indicate that an estimated 1,605 people have that E. coli strain so far but do not have HUS, according to the center.

Infections have also been identified in Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, according to the organization.

Two women and a man who traveled last month to northern Germany remain hospitalized in the United States with HUS, Chris Braden of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. A fourth person developed bloody diarrhea, but was not hospitalized, he added.

Two U.S. service members in Germany also developed diarrhea, Braden said. "We have no expectation that this will spread in our country," he added.

The U.S. government website foodsafety.gov says that since 1996, "there have been at least 30 reported outbreaks of food-borne illness associated with different types of raw and lightly cooked sprouts. Most of these outbreaks were caused by Salmonella and E. coli."

The World Health Organization says that in 1996, "an outbreak linked to contaminated radish sprouts in school lunches caused 9,451 cases" of E. coli in Japan.

CNN's Frederik Pleitgen, Al Goodman and Per Nyberg contributed to this report.

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