German tests link bean sprouts to deadly E. coli

"People who ate sprouts were nine times more likely to have bloody diarrhoea than those who did not," Mr Burger said.
Germany's top disease control official said the origin of the contamination was still believed to be the small organic farm in Lower Saxony which first came under suspicion at the weekend.
"The links are ever clearer - it's a hot lead," he told reporters in Berlin, at a joint news conference with the heads of Germany's federal institute for risk assessment and federal office for consumer protection.
He said it was possible that all tainted sprouts had now either been consumed or thrown away, but he warned the crisis was not yet over.
"There will be new cases coming up," he said.

"Thousands of tests carried out on tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce have proved negative," he added.
Lower Saxony agriculture minister Gert Lindemann said earlier this week that experts had found no traces of the E. coli bacterium strain at the Bienenbuettel farm but he did not rule it out as the source of the contamination.
In an interview to be published in next week's edition of Focus magazine, Mr Lindemann said some 60 of the people taken ill had eaten sprouts from the farm, which employs about 15 people.
Contamination might have been caused by contaminated seeds or "poor hygiene", he added.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13725953

~liwen~