The dangerous E. coli, the ones causing the horrorshow in Germany right now, are called STEC (Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli, for the name of their horrific poison, and pronounced ess-teck). And if you think it’s only a German problem, you’re so wrong.
STEC usually migrate to food through direct or indirect contact with the contents of the animal’s intestinal tract: dung, not to put too fine a point on it. Whether the growth or even origin of STEC — which have only been associated with human illness for 30 years — could have resulted in part from feeding cattle grain (as opposed to their natural grass), or was aided by industrial agriculture’s unnecessary reliance on prophylactic antibiotics (a shameful story, but one that must wait), may never be known.
What is known is that if you keep STEC out of beef you partially solve the problem, and if you keep manure off other foods you partially solve the problem, too. It isn’t easy, and it’s never going to be foolproof, but these are the steps to take. If you’re the cattle industry, you’d rather blame the whole thing on sprouts that were “somehow” contaminated. (Ban sprouts! No one really likes them anyway.) But blaming the sprouts is like blaming your nose for a virus-containing sneeze: That STEC came from somewhere, and in its history is an animal’s gut.
Because they’re grown in a warm, moist, gut-like environment, sprouts are an excellent vehicle for maintaining and maybe even reproducing STEC (indeed, so excellent that the Centers for Disease Control un-recommends them), but their involvement may never be proven.
Still, it’s likely that most of the thousands of people sickened in Germany ate a vegetable that was contaminated in its handling: manure got into the growing or rinsing water; or it was on the hands of a picker; or it got dropped on a veggie by a bird, or brushed onto it by a wandering animal; or it was in a truck that took the sprouts to the packager, or some other innocent accident, the kind we must do our best to prevent, the kind that’s magnified by combining huge lots of food from dozens of different sources and handling them all together. Remember, 50 STEC are enough to make you sick; one head of lettuce with a few hundred thousand bacteria, tossed together with a few tons of uncontaminated greens, then sold in thousands of packages, can mess up a lot of people.
Outbreaks of the deadly kinds of STEC — there are at least seven really toxic strains, including the German one — are common enough. But these outbreaks are the tip of the iceberg; there are tens of thousands of “sporadic” cases from STEC every year in the United States alone, most of them unreported but no less deadly for that.
Although the U.S. has a pretty good track record when it comes to identifying and fighting STEC — thanks to much struggle on the part of lawyers and public health officials, and sound thinking in the USDA and FDA — we’re falling way behind in preventing outbreaks like the current one, and we are even further behind in preventing the sporadic ones, those that get no headlines, remain unreported and probably comprise the majority of cases. As is so common these days, a lack of funding and political will is the root of the problem.
The STEC that caused the infamous Jack in the Box outbreak of 1993 is formally called E. coli O157:H7. The U.S. has zero tolerance for that STEC, because in 1994 — against the predictable protests of the meat industry — O157 was labeled an “adulterant,” which means that any food in which it’s discovered is recalled; happens all the time, though sometimes too late. There are, as I said, other STEC just as murderous, and we have a much more lenient policy about their presence in food: they’re unregulated. Their presence in food is, legally speaking, just fine.
In theory, if the German thing happened here and the culprit were O157, it might have been prevented. But if the German thing happened here and the culprit were a non-O157 STEC, as it was in Germany (for those of you keeping score at home, that one has been labeled O104:H4), we’d be in the same boat — er, hospital — as our Saxon cousins.
To slow the deadly effects of STEC, we need more and better basic and applied research to identify them and test for them. We also need more testing of water used for irrigation and washing; reduced animal intrusions; alert farmworkers (an aside: people tend to be more alert if they’re more valued and less overworked and underpaid); and increased testing before people get sick and better reporting when they do get sick. (Less cow manure would help, but that isn’t about to happen.) All of these steps take money.
Even more important, we need to immediately acknowledge that O157 is not the only deadly STEC out there (non-O157 STEC has been found in up to six percent of a random sampling of meat, and not just hamburger), an acknowledgment that — of course — the meat industry is unwilling to make. And we need to declare those other STEC as “adulterants” and get them out of the food supply to the best of our ability. The two agencies that can act on this are USDA and FDA, and both are hamstrung by budget policy (the FDA needs more money for inspection; the House wants to give it less) and, of course, by the meat lobby and its allies.
Public health — arguably among the most important reasons for society’s existence in the first place — has somehow become a “liberal” cause and therefore unfashionable. But if the origin of these illnesses were bio-terrorism, money would be no object and even politics might be shunted aside. The fact is that a huge and powerful lobby would rather see a few thousand annual underreported deaths and the occasional high-visibility outbreak than submit to further regulation and smaller profits. Especially if that outbreak is in Germany, a world away. But next time it might not be.
Message from the Chair of Organic Federation of Australia
The E. coli outbreak in Germany was first attributed to organic cucumbers and then to organic sprouts even though in both cases despite extensive testing they proved to be clear of it. The linking of this epidemic to organic products has caused a lot of negative reporting and misrepresentations about organic systems.
Coincidently I was in both Spain and Germany at the time epidemic and was able to get more accurate information on the event than has been portrayed in much of the international media. This month's edition of the Organic Update gives the balanced perspective that is missing from most media stories.
Best Regards,
Andre Leu
Chair
Enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC)
The outbreak of a new strain of pathogenic EHEC bacteria claimed the lives of more than thirty people in Germany and more than 3200 people became ill.
The German authorities initially blamed organic Spanish cucumbers and now are blaming organic sprouts.
For the record the German Government never found this E.coli strain in the sprouts or in the organic sprout farm, despite extensive DNA testing. Many experts say that the evidence the German authorities used to blame the sprout farm is inconclusive. 60 people out of 3,200 who contacted the illness either ate the sprouts or worked at the farm.
This does not explain how the more that 3,100 other people got ill as they had no contact with the sprouts or the farm.
According to several media reports, experts are critical of the way the German health authorities have handled the outbreak and are very critical of the way they blamed it on organic produce without any clear evidence.
Time Magazine, June 20, has an excellent article showing that the poor procedures of the German authorities had allowed this disease to reach epidemic proportions and is the real reason for extent of the outbreak.
Unfortunately putting blame on organic Spanish cucumbers and then on organic sprouts has created a lot of misinformation and has done enormous damage to the reputation of organic foods and generated anti organic smear campaigns in the world media.
The false accusations have cost European vegetable farmers more than one billion dollars and has put thousands of people out of work. The European Commission will spend hundreds of millions of Euros to give partial compensation to farmers. The Spanish Government is looking to sue the German authorities to recover all of the losses.
At the same time two other E.coli illness outbreaks in Europe - one in conventional sprouts from England and the other in conventional beef were largely unreported. These outbreaks were quickly controlled by French and other European health authorities.
All the science and statistics show that there is no greater risk from organic systems over conventional systems for E.coli.
FiBL has produced a very comprehensive document on this issue. It can be downloaded from: http://orgprints.org/18904/10/fibl-2011-ehec-english.pdf
Other studies including a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report concluded that the superior management practices of organic agriculture reduce E. coli and mycotoxin infections in food.
'It can be concluded that organic farming potentially reduces the risk of E. coli infection - Two studies reported by Woess found that aflatoxin M1 levels in organic milk were lower than in conventional milk ... As organically raised livestock are fed greater proportions of hay, grass and silage, there is reduced opportunity for mycotoxin contaminated feed to lead to mycotoxin contaminated milk'.The report further stated. 'Animal feeding practices followed in organic livestock production, also lead to a reduction in contamination of food products of animal origin.'
Source: FAO (2000) Twenty Second FAO Regional Conference for Europe, Porto, Portugal, 24-28 July 2000 Agenda Item 10.1, FOOD SAFETY AND QUALITY AS AFFECTED BY ORGANIC FARMING
