News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Producers of sprouts should add more food safety steps throughout the production chain to lower the risk of the kind of contamination that triggered a widespread Escherichia coli outbreak in Europe earlier this year, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said in a report released yesterday.

– German researchers who were the first to release the initial genome sequence of the Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak strain published their in-depth findings yesterday, which found that it differed from a 2001 strain found in Germany, but that both could have evolved from a common progenitor.

(CIDRAP News) – French public health officials have linked five more Escherichia coli O104:H4 infections to the cluster of Bordeaux patients who ate sprouts at an event in early June, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – The European Union today ordered the recall and ban of certain types of seeds from Egypt after a new report from its food safety agency further detailed a link between the products and Escherichia coli outbreaks in Germany and France.

(CIDRAP News) – The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has deleted the name of a German seed importer from a risk assessment report on the recent cluster of Escherichia coli cases in France, out of concern about potential unnecessary harm to the company, CIDRAP News learned today.