Cucumbers came under fresh suspicion on Wednesday in Germany's desperate hunt for a pathogen that has killed 26 people, with investigators discovering the mutant bacteria on food scraps in a family's garbage.

It was the first time the type O 104 enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) had been confirmed on any food since the outbreak began in mid-May. All the other evidence has come from fecal tests.

The scraps turned up in garbage in the eastern city of Magdeburg, authorities of the state of Saxony-Anhalt said.

Three of the family have been sick: the father only had a stomach upset, the mother has been discharged after a hospital stay for diarrhea and the daughter is suffering from hemolytic-uraemic syndrome (HUS), a condition caused by EHEC where the kidneys fail.

Experts said they still did not know how the bacteria came to be on the cucumber, which had been in the bin for a week and a half.

Earlier in the day, investigators affirmed that bean sprouts from a market garden remained the likeliest cause of the E coli outbreak, despite the fact that the pathogen has not been found on any sprouts.

At a Berlin news conference, officials summed up the evidence against sprouts.
One woman working at the Bienenbuettel Gaertnerhof, an organic sprout grower, has been infected with EHEC, the germ behind the outbreak, and two other women there had unexplained diarrhea in May, Lower Saxony state officials said.
Two more clusters of EHEC victims were meanwhile confirmed as having eaten sprouts from the Gaertnerhof.

Consumer Affairs Minister Ilse Aigner said a total of eight clusters of EHEC victims who ate Gaertnerhof products had been spotted this way

Amy went to France the other day and I’ve got the 1973 classic, Come Monday by Jimmy Buffett running through my head (check the video below; now that’s a moustache).

But Amy’s worried about cucumbers.

This is a photo of her airplane meal.

For a continent that prides itself on traceability and farmers’ markets, the response to the E. coli O104 outbreak, which has killed 17, stricken 470 with severe kidney disease and sickened some 1,500, has been woefully inadequate.

And now, 10 days after the outbreak emerged, the Germans say it wasn’t Spanish cucumbers in some sort of European revisionist history (they’re good at that).

Here are the top-5 dumb things about the E. coli O104 outbreak; at some point politics may take a back seat to public health; but this is Europe.

5. Don’t blame Spain

Yesterday, the Minister of Agriculture for Spain did what every politician does and fell on her sword by eating the suspected produce – killer cucumbers (left).

Spain's agriculture minister Rosa Aguilar defended her country's fresh produce and said it is still unclear exactly when and where the vegetables were contaminated.

She even tucked in to some cucumbers grown in Spain on Monday to show they cannot be blamed for one of the largest E. coli outbreaks in the world.

What no one has mentioned is the on-farm food safety steps that Spanish and other growers, distributors and retailers take to ensure microbial food safety. An outbreak this huge is an opportunity to brag – if procedures are in place. But maybe that’s why no one is bragging.

4. Terrible journalism

Why has no one tried to track down the source and looked at food safety procedures? The New York Times, 10 days into the crisis went with, Outbreak of Infections, probably the worst headline ever. E. coli O104 is not herpes. Time magazine went with, don’t panic, but be concerned.

3. It’s a trade/money thing

Contrary to humanistic goodwill, most food safety trade issues have nothing to do with public health and everything to do with market access. That’s why Gerd Sonnleitner, the head of the German Farmers' Association (DVB), called for stronger regulation of imported vegetables and said there has been unwarranted fearmongering about German vegetable products.

“We have very strict rules over the entire chain on controlling and accepting what we think is right,” Sonnleitner said. “Unfortunately imports are tested much more laxly.

So why isn’t Sonnleitner explaining all the things German farmers do to enhance on-farm food safety?

No need. They’ve decided to sue German health authority the Robert Koch Institute and the Federal Consumer Ministry for damages over warnings about eating vegetables made to the public in the wake of the E. coli bacteria outbreak.

2. It’s a small risk thing

More people die every day in car accidents than are likely to perish from the current E. coli outbreak. Yet we know every time we get behind the wheel of a car that we are taking a small risk. We don't, on the other hand, expect to die from eating a cucumber.

The left-wing Berliner Zeitung was the strongest proponent of the latter case, arguing that 21st-century consumers were so geographically and psychologically disconnected from their food production that they had only themselves to blame.

The right-wing Berliner Morgenpost pointed out that swine flu resulted in a much higher death toll than that caused so far by E. coli. And swine flu, ultimately, was seen as media hype.

Even the small risk posed by the bacteria could be avoided by taking sensible hygiene precautions. And if a person does get sick, they can see their doctor right away.

Who writes this stuff?

1. It’s a women thing

At the beginning of the public phase of the outbreak, Gerard Krause of the Robert Koch health authority responsible for epidemiology, said,

“Women prepare food more often, and it is there they could have come into contact with it, possibly while cleaning vegetables or other foodstuffs.”

In a German version of blame-the-consumer, the Robert Koch Institute has recommended people improve kitchen hygiene, making sure in particular that cutting boards and knives are clean.

It’s doubtful that 1,500 women practiced lousy kitchen cleanliness at the same time across Germany.

The numbers of dead and dying continue to spin out of control in Europe s no one seems to know how this happened.

German Health Minister Daniel Bahr said Monday that authorities still haven't pinned down definitively the source of the E. coli infection — and "we unfortunately still have to expect a rising number of cases."

An EU official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to standing regulations, said the transport chain was long, and the cucumbers from Spain could have been contaminated at any point along the route.

Spain, meanwhile, went on the defensive, saying there was no proof that the E. coli outbreak has been caused by Spanish vegetables.

"You can't attribute the origin of this sickness to Spain," Spain's Secretary of State for European Affairs, Diego Lopez Garrido told reporters in Brussels. "There is no proof and that's why we are going to demand accountability from those who have blamed Spain for this matter."

More women have died in Germany from an E. coli O104 outbreak linked to cucumbers grown in Spain, bringing the death toll to 10. Of the 1,000 or so sick, 276 have hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).

Hospitals in the city of Hamburg, where more than 400 people are believed to have been infected, were said to be overwhelmed and sending patients to clinics elsewhere in the country.

Austria's food safety agency ordered a recall of organically grown cucumbers, tomatoes and aubergines supplied by a Spanish producer which is thought to be the source of the outbreak. It said 33 Austrian stores were affected.

According to Denmark's National Serum Institute, there are nine confirmed cases, with at least another eight people suspected of having the intestinal infection, also known as VTEC, in Denmark.

Sweden has reported 25 E. coli cases, of whom 10 developed HUS, according to the European Commission, while Britain counted three cases (two HUS).

Officials in the Czech Republic said the cucumbers may have been exported there, as well as to Austria, Hungary and Luxembourg.

"As long as the experts in Germany and Spain have not been able to name the source of the agent without any doubt, the general warning for vegetables still holds," German Agriculture and Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner said on Sunday in a report in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

The European Commission says experts are now probing two agricultural sites in southern Spain, in Almeria and Malaga, suspected of exporting products, most likely cucumbers, tainted with E. coli.