Hamburg Sued For False Cucumber Warning

A Spanish company is suing the German city of Hamburg for more than two million euros after its cucumbers were wrongly blamed for a deadly E.

Frunet, a Spanish organic fruit and vegetable company, has sued Hamburg, the second largest city of Germany, for more than two million euros for wrongly blaming its cucumbers for a deadly E.coli outbreak, officials said Thursday.

The Spanish firm has lodged a 2.3-million-euro ($3.0 million) claim against the northern port city's health and consumer protection authority.

About Salmonellosis
Poor hygienic practices during cooking or handling of food products can cause this distressing infection of the intestines leading to diarrhea, cramps and fever.

"The Office for Health and Consumer Protection rejects these claims since the warning about the company's cucumbers was necessary and right," the health office said in a written statement.

Insisting it believed it had taken the right course of action in issuing a warning with the information it had at the time, it said: "Protecting health comes before economic interests of companies."

A Hamburg court spokesman confirmed the claim had been lodged at the end of November.

E.coli's Genetic Code Redesigned
The protein-making machinery of E.coli has been successfully re-engineered by Yale University researchers.

Fifty people died in Germany and one in Sweden after the outbreak of the virulent strain of enterohaemorrhagic E.coli (EHEC) in May and June which authorities in Hamburg, the epicentre of the outbreak, initially attributed to Spanish cucumbers.

Germany later said vegetable sprouts were to blame.

E.coli Research Gets a Boost Through EU Funding
The EU has decided to pump funds to the tune of 2.2 million euros in research on the lethal E.coli strain that caused havoc not too long ago.

The cucumber warning prompted an EU-wide alert and dealt Spanish growers a heavy blow as sales slumped across the 27-nation bloc. Producers in other countries were also hit.

The European Union provided 227 million euros in compensation for European producers of cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, courgettes and sweet peppers, withdrawn from the market as a result of the disease.

E.coli Testing in Beef
The US government is expanding its testing of E.coli in meat, to reduce food poisoning threat.

Source-AFP