E.coli outbreak traced to bean sprouts

Berlin (CNN) -- Four more deaths have been confirmed by German health officials Friday bringing the total number of European deaths from an E. coli outbreak to 31. All but one were in Germany.

According to German health authorities the bacteria has been traced to sprouts found in a North Rhine-Westphalia household in western Germany. This is the first time the actual bacteria has been found in produce.

The number of people infected with E. coli now stands at 2,988, of whom 759 have the severe form of the intestinal illness. Though the rate of infection is slowing, officials at the Robert Koch Institute said the number of infections will continue to rise.

A spokesman for the German ministry of consumer affairs said sprouts were tested in the home when two members of the family became infected after eating the sprouts.

The vegetables in question seem to originate from a farm in Northern Germany that has already been linked to the outbreak, ministry spokesman Stephan Melessa.

Investigators determined bean sprouts were the cause of the outbreak after 17 people became ill after eating at the same restaurant, Reinhard Burger, president of the Robert Koch Institute, told reporters.

Authorities questioned people about what they ate and asked the cooks where the ingredients came from, Burger said.

The common denominator, he said, was only those who ate food containing the sprouts became ill.

Farmers in Spain, France, Holland and Belgium have been seeking compensation for their losses. The European Commission has proposed that the European Union pay about $300 million, but Spain alone claims about $600 million in losses.

In Spain, the fresh produce exporter Frunet filed what is believed to be the first lawsuit by a Spanish company against the Hamburg state government over its earlier allegations that Spanish products were to blame for the E.coli outbreak.

The complaint, filed Thursday in Hamburg, demands the immediate release of all laboratory tests and other documentation that Hamburg officials used when they blamed -- wrongly it turns out -- Frunet's organic cucumbers as a source of the outbreak, Frunet's owner, Antonio Lavao, told CNN by phone on Friday.

Frunet, based in Spain's southern Malaga province, expects to file another lawsuit against the Hamburg state government seeking 1 million euros ($144 million) in losses from fresh produce it had to destroy, Lavao said.

"My company was named specifically" by German authorities, Lavao said.

His exports remain blocked because even as German and European Commission officials have cleared Spanish cucumbers generally of any link to the outbreak, there remains suspicion among his clients since his firm was identified, wrongly, as a source of the bacteria, he said.

"We don't want to be collateral damage. We want a specific rectification," Lavao said.

The lawsuit is the first of its kind by a Spanish company against German authorities, said Jose Maria Pozancos, managing director of Spain's fresh produce export federation Fepex.

Frunet grows relatively few cucumbers; its speciality is premium tomatoes for export.

Lavao said he was not confident that his firm would receive any public compensation, which is why it filed the lawsuit against German authorities.

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

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Germany expecting more E.coli deaths (Reuters)

HAMBURG (Reuters) – Germany expects the death toll from the E.coli outbreak to rise although the number of new infections from the virulent strain of bacteria that has killed 24 people is likely to drop, the government said on Wednesday.

"There will be new cases and unfortunately we have to expect more deaths, but the number of new infections are dropping significantly," Health Minister Daniel Bahr told German TV .

"I can't sound the all-clear, but after analyzing the latest data we have reasonable cause for hope," he said.

The German government has been criticized at home and around Europe for its failure to pin down the cause of the outbreak that has stricken over 2,400 people in 12 countries. All cases have been traced back to near Hamburg in northern Germany.

The European Union's health chief John Dalli, attending a crisis meeting with officials in Berlin, urged Germany to seek the help of international experts in dealing with what may be the deadliest outbreak of E.coli so far.

About one third of E.coli patients in the latest outbreak have developed a severe complication called haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) affecting the blood, kidneys and nervous system.

Analysis of samples from restaurants, canteens and kitchens which prepared food where patients ate has failed to yield conclusive evidence for the theory that organic sprouts from a farm in the state of Lower Saxony are to blame.

"EPIDEMIC POLICE?"

With the critical spotlight on the German federal system which divides responsibility for crisis response between state and central authorities, Bahr rejected calls for a national "epidemic police." He said it was "typically German" to call for a new authority every time there is a fresh crisis.

The EU faces compensation costs of more than 150 million euros ($220 million) for farmers hit by plummeting sales of raw vegetables, after Germany first blamed cucumbers from Spain and other salad vegetables, and then German bean sprouts.

"We must draw on the experience in all of Europe and even beyond," Dalli told Die Welt newspaper. "I emphasize strongly how important it is to cooperate closely and share specialist knowledge to bring the E.coli outbreak to an end quickly."

Dalli's visit comes as German authorities struggle to pin down the source of the month-old outbreak of a rare strain of E.coli. He advised Berlin to use the experience of countries which have dealt with E.coli outbreaks.

The United States and Japan have had similar deadly outbreaks linked to sprouts while it was a Chinese laboratory that used DNA sequencing technology to identify this E.coli outbreak as a new and "highly infectious and toxic" strain.

(Additional reporting by Christiaan Hetzner in Berlin; writing by Eric Kelsey; editing by Myra MacDonald)

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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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