EU Health and Consumer Affairs Commissioner John Dalli will today hold important talks in Germany over the E.coli outbreak that has already caused the deaths of 22 people and made another 1,766 ill.
The source of the bacterium remains unknown as German experts race against time to identify it. Mr Dalli will meet German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner amid efforts to get to grips with the deadly outbreak.
The German authorities yesterday said that a beansprout farm that had originally been identified as the source tested negative.
It was the second false alarm, after a warning that Spanish cucumbers were suspected to be the source later proved to be groundless. This caused outrage among farming communities, particularly in Spain, after they saw their business plummet.
Commissioner Dalli yesterday said the EU’s rapid alert system will be reviewed following this crisis. The effectiveness of the system was discussed at an EU Agriculture Ministers meeting in Luxembourg attended by Mr Dalli.
“We are always in the process of improving our systems. The Commission will be looking at making adjustments in order to ensure that the same pitfalls can be avoided in the future,” he said.
He stressed the need to go by scientific proof in these circumstances. “We need certainty before we make statements, because news travels fast and becomes public knowledge immediately. It can create a lot of fear and harm operators within the system.”
However, he refused to censure the German authorities for issuing the alert: “It is easy to ask with hindsight why that decision was taken but the pressure on an individual at a specific moment in time is different from us sitting back and commenting on the situation after the event.”
In order to placate the critics, the European Commission yesterday proposed to grant €150 million in compensation to farmers affected by an E.coli outbreak. However, many member states said this amount was insufficient.
Spanish fruit and vegetable producers have been hardest hit by the collapse in sales. “No, it’s not enough for Spain,” said the country’s farm minister Rosa Aguilar when asked about the European Commission’s compensation offer.
EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos said the money would go to growers of fresh vegetables such as tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and courgettes who have been affected since the outbreak of the disease at the beginning of last month.
The Commission’s proposal would see producers receive up to 30 per cent of the total value of products they withdrew from the market, said EU agriculture spokesman Roger Waite.
Spain has estimated its own losses at €200 million per week since Germany blamed its produce for the outbreak. Other countries affected are the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Portugal.
Meanwhile, the US yesterday confirmed one of four suspected cases of E.coli illness in Americans who recently travelled to Hamburg, the German city where the outbreak is concentrated.
The confirmed patient was hospitalised in Massachusetts after developing a type of kidney failure, hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), which is associated with the bacteria.