Slightly risque vegetable related photograph.
As Spaniards take umbrage at their cucumbers being falsely maligned, I haven’t seen terrorists mentioned yet as a possible source but would not be too surprised to see it trotted out somewhere in the MSM in the coming days as the story takes a turn for the worse :
Germany’s centre for disease control reported the number of people suffering life-threatening complications resulting from the infection rose from 373 on Tuesday to 470 on Wednesday. At the same time the centre recorded 365 new cases, bringing the total to around 1,500.
“The situation is deteriorating dramatically for our patients, and the worst thing is that we don’t know what’s causing it,” Rolf Stahl, a kidney specialist working at the epicentre of the outbreak in Hamburg, told the German magazine Der Spiegel.
Dr. Robert Tauxe, a food-borne disease expert at the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, described the E.coli outbreak as “extraordinary” adding that “there has not been such an outbreak before that we know of in the history of public health.”
In the meantime, it would seem that EU public health officials are about as good at finding bacteriological sources as Coalition troops were in finding Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq :
Despite a massive hunt scientists have been unable to locate the source of the bacteria. Tests have now cleared the initial suspect, Spanish cucumbers, although experts still believe that contaminated vegetables are probably behind the outbreak.
Whilst taking any sentence that includes both “experts” and “probably” with a pinch of salt, the only certainty I see will be enormous compensation claims from Spanish vegetable producers in retaliation for Germany pointing fingers without proof.
Update
Well I beat Pravda to the same thought by a full day!
That it is their own organic farming that is the cause of the outbreak?
Oh no, it couldn’t possibly be that…….could it?
microdave – interesting link and a full week ago as well. I wonder how much lobbying is going on behind the scenes to keep organic farming from being mentioned in the main news?
XX As Spaniards take umbrage at their cucumbers being falsely maligned, I haven’t seen terrorists mentioned yet as a possible source but would not be too surprised to see it trotted out somewhere in the MSM in the coming days XX
It is a question that has been seriously asked of scientists and politicians here. At least once per day, on all of our T.V and radio channels.
The Bundeskriminalamt (German wide criminal investigation police) and Verfassungschutz (Protection of the constitution, and from internal and external threat to Germany. (Whom I work for)) Have been investigating along these lines for a couple of weeks now.
FT – Very interesting to read that – I suppose in these times it would be one of the first things to consider when you get a mass outbreak of a rather nasty bug. I noticed Pravda hasa similar article today along those very lines but am not aware of anything like that in the UK press yet which is surprising as terrorism seems to be mentioned in just about every article.
Working on the basis that the Germans are moving towards a green government, that they are alleged to be the ‘greenest’ nation on earth and that the outbreak appears to be centred on Germany, maybe their authorities are feverishly attempting to hide the potentially embarrassing fact that it is their own organic farming that is the cause of the outbreak?
Time Traveller – it could very well be the case especially as all the cases seem to originate inside Germany right now.