Russia banned European vegetable imports on Thursday as Britain reported an outbreak of the mysterious lethal bacteria that has killed 18, mainly in Germany, and Spain demanded a payback for its farmers.
German authorities have failed to pinpoint the origin of the outbreak, which has infected more than 2000 people in the past month and dealt a blow to the European farm sector amid official warnings to avoid raw vegetables.
As confusion reigned over the killer strain of E. coli bacteria, Russia said it had blacklisted imports of fresh vegetables from European Union countries with immediate effect and slammed food safety standards in the bloc.
Meanwhile Britain said seven people there had been infected with the bacteria, including three British nationals who had recently travelled to Germany and four German nationals.
Russia's Rospotrebnadzor watchdog said its ban would remain in force until the EU explained what caused the 18 deaths - all but one of them in Germany.
"This shows that Europe's lauded health legislation - one which Russia is being urged to adopt - does not work," consumer watchdog's chief Gennady Onishchenko was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
The European Commission slammed the move as "disproportionate" and demanded an explanation from Russia, whose vegetable exports from Europe amount to around 600 million euros ($A811.85 million) each year.
At the same time the United Arab Emirates has banned the import of cucumbers from Germany, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands over the scare.
But Spain said its own tests on its cucumbers showed no sign of the Enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), which can result in full-blown haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) - a disease that causes bloody diarrhoea and serious liver damage.
Of the seven cases in Britain, three had HUS and the other four suffered bloody diarrhoea, the Health Protection Agency said.
Officials in the northern German port city of Hamburg, the epicentre of the outbreak, had last week cited imported Spanish cucumbers as the source of the contamination.
But tests on two Spanish cucumbers there this week showed that while they carried dangerous EHEC bacteria, it was not the strain responsible for the current massive contamination, whose toll in Germany rose to 17 after the death of an elderly woman in Hamburg overnight.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Spain, already struggling with a weak economy and high unemployment, would seek compensation over the false allegations.
"Yesterday, it became clear, with the analyses carried out by the Spanish agency for food safety, that there is not the slightest indication that the origin of the serious infection is any Spanish product," he said in an interview with Spanish national radio.
"Therefore, I would have liked a clearer reaction from the (European) Commission.
"Now we have a very ambitious task ahead of us, which is to recover our good reputation as soon as possible and the trade in all Spanish products."
Spain will also "seek reparations before the relevant authorities in Europe for the harm sustained", he said, after the European Commission lifted its warning over Spanish cucumbers.
Spain's fruit and vegetable exporters estimate they have lost more than 200 million euros a week as 150,000 tonnes of produce went unsold in a Europe-wide reaction to the outbreak.
In a statement, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said the "causative agent" was a strain of bacteria that are called Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli, or STEC.
The communique confirmed the CDC's previous suspicions that the bacteria, which it said had occurred only rarely worldwide, was responsible for the killer outbreak.
It said seven outbreak strains found in Germany and two in Denmark were of an "indistinguishable pattern".
The agency reiterated that contaminated food "seems the most likely vehicle of infection" but stressed the source was still under investigation.
"There is currently no indication that raw milk or meat is associated with the outbreak," the agency said, repeating what it had said in a previous statement.
The ECDC statement was issued on the basis of data for 10 deaths and 499 cases of haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), a condition unleashed by STEC that causes bloody diarrhoea and serious liver damage.
"Laboratory results indicate that STEC serogroup 0104:H4 (Stx2-positive, eae-negative, hly-negative, ESBL, aat, aggR, aap) is the causative agent," it said.
HUS caused by infections by STEC 0104 types of E. coli usually occur in young children under five, the CDC observed.
But in the latest outbreak, the great majority of cases have been adults and two-thirds of them women.
Meanwhile the United Arab Emirates has banned the import of cucumbers from four European countries, newspapers reported on Thursday.
"Supermarkets in Abu Dhabi have removed imported cucumbers from Germany, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands for a second round of testing for E. coli contamination," reported The National daily.
"The vegetables were taken off shelves ... hours after the Ministry of Environment and Water imposed a temporary import ban of the vegetable from those countries," the English-language daily added.
"Other vegetables from these countries will be allowed into the UAE only if importers present a health certificate stating the food is free of E. coli," it said.
µMore Wallpapers From House of Entertainment:µ
ê.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Here are some rules for commenting on www.ShaanAli.info :
1,All comments except spams are welcome .
2,If you want to make a request ,please use English .
3,Do not use names such as Admin or Mod for commenting because it make others misunderstand .
That's all .Thanks for commenting .
4,Drop your comments Complaints Required Question In the Comments Box we Will reply you with in 24 hours