EU Vegetables Destroyed as Deadly E. Coli Damps Demand

June 03, 2011, 12:11 PM EDT By Tony C. Dreibus

(Adds Copa-Cogeca comments starting in seventh paragraph.)

June 3 (Bloomberg) -- European Union vegetable supplies are being destroyed as demand is curbed by the deadliest outbreak of E. coli on record, with producers losing millions of euros a day because of trade restrictions.

Cucumber, lettuce and tomato prices are tumbling and orders are being canceled, said Philippe Binard, general delegate of Freshfel Europe, which represents the industry. The market is at “an alarming standstill,” according to the Brussels-based group. The losses are forcing some farmers out of business, said Copa-Cogeca, an agricultural lobby group based in Brussels.

“This is having a serious impact because we’re dealing with perishable products,” Binard said by phone today. “We can’t store it and say that in six months, when the market is better, we’ll ship it.”

Infections have been found in 10 European nations and the World Health Organization says at least 16 people died. Some have a rare strain which releases a toxin damaging kidneys and other organs. While German officials are advising consumers to avoid raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce, the original source is most likely cattle, said Rowland Cobbold, a veterinary public health researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Russia, which according to Freshfel buys 400 million euros ($580 million) of EU vegetables a year, banned imports yesterday. That contravenes World Trade Organization rules, Fernando Valenzuela, head of the EU delegation to Russia, was cited by RIA Novosti as saying. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said today he won’t “poison people” to satisfy WTO rules.

‘Very Isolated’

“Russia is really overreacting to the situation,” Binard said. “The ban applies to all EU countries and to all vegetables, when we know the problem seems to be very isolated to some parts of Germany.”

Spain’s agriculture industry is losing 200 million euros a week and German farmers are losing about 1 million euros a day, said Amanda Cheesley, a spokeswoman for Copa-Cogeca. That should decline after cucumbers from the southwestern European country were ruled out as the source of the bacteria, she said. None tested positive for the type causing the outbreak, the EU said in a statement.

’Nothing Sold’

“The Spanish were the most hard hit so they’re quite angry,” Cheesley said. “When you have an announcement like that, consumption falls for all cucumbers in all member states. In Belgium on Tuesday, cucumber sales were 25 percent for 25 percent of the price. In Spain, nothing sold. Hopefully it will pick up a bit now that they’ve cleared Spanish cucumbers.”

Farmers in Italy, the biggest European vegetable producer, harvested 13.65 million metric tons in 2009, the most recent data from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization show. Spain was the second-biggest with 13.63 million tons. China is the world’s biggest vegetable producer followed by India, according to the UN.

Italian cucumbers sold for 15 cents (22 U.S. cents) a kilogram (2.2 pounds) as of May 29, compared with 70 cents at the end of April, according to data from Instituto di Servizi per il Merca.

‘Supply Chain’

“This is impacting the whole supply chain,” Binard said. “The producer is obviously the first to be affected. Behind him are the people who are packing and shipping and the importers and the wholesalers and the retailers are all being affected. A lot of transport is being canceled and it’s not just in Germany, it’s a situation affecting the whole of Europe.”

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by telephone yesterday and agreed that the two countries will try to get aid for European farmers affected, according to an e-mailed statement from the press office of the German government.

--Editors: Sharon Lindores, Nicholas Larkin

To contact the editor responsible for this story Tony Dreibus at tdreibus@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net.

View the original article here

Russia Bans EU Vegetables Over Deadly E. Coli Outbreak

Russia banned imports of raw vegetables from the European Union on Thursday because of a deadly E.coli outbreak centered in Germany, a move branded "disproportionate" by Brussels.

German health officials said the infections, which have killed at least 17 people and made more than 1,500 others ill in eight European countries, could go on for months and their precise source may never be pinned down.

Russia had already banned imports of vegetables from Germany and Spain over the outbreak, which German officials originally blamed on contaminated cucumbers imported from Spain before backtracking and apologizing to Madrid.

Gennady Onishchenko, head of the Russian consumer protection agency Rospotrebnadzor, said the deaths caused by the outbreak "demonstrate that the much-praised European sanitary legislation, which Russia is being urged to adopt, does not work," Interfax news agency reported.
The new ban would take effect on Thursday morning, he said, prompting an immediate protest from the European Union.

Spain is threatening legal action over the crisis. It wants compensation for its farmers, who say lost sales are costing them 200 million euros ($287 million) a week and could put 70,000 people out of work.

The European Commission has said it is looking at what it could do about the impact on producers.

Reinhard Burger, head of German disease control agency the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), admitted the precise source of the disease outbreak may never be found.

"There still is no indication of a definable source," Burger told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday, adding it was too early to say that a plateau of new cases had been reached.

The RKI reported 365 new E.coli cases on Wednesday and said a quarter of them involved a life-threatening complication of a type of E.coli known as Shiga toxin-producing E.coli (STEC).

Authorities gave no fresh figures on Thursday, a public holiday in Germany, but some media reported late on Wednesday that a 17th patient had died.

FROM FARM TO FORK

EU health experts say they have been shocked by the size and severity of the outbreak, which is on a scale never seen before in the region.

Denis Coulombier, head of surveillance and response for the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which monitors disease in the EU, said studies so far show a strong link between disease symptoms and the consumption of fresh vegetables.

"To have such a high number of severe cases means that probably there was a huge contamination at some junction," he told Reuters in an interview. "That could have been anywhere from the farm to the fork — in transport, packaging, cleaning, at wholesalers, or retailers — anywhere along that food chain."

Russia's Onishchenko said it had resorted to a ban because "the situation has not been brought under control in a month."

"The sources of the infection and factors in its spread have not been established," state-run RIA quoted him as saying.

European Union countries exported 594 million euros ($853 million) worth of vegetables to Russia last year while EU imports of vegetables from Russia were just 29 million euros, EU data show. It was not clear what proportion of that was raw.

European Commission spokesman Frederic Vincent said the EU Health Commission John Dalli would be writing to Moscow "within hours" to tell them the ban was disproportionate.

France, Germany and Poland are the biggest exporters of fruits and vegetables to Russia, an EU spokesman said.

The ECDC says cases of E.coli linked with this outbreak have also been reported in Sweden, where one of the deaths occurred, and in Denmark, Britain, Spain and the Netherlands. Most infections reported outside Germany involved German nationals or people who had recently travelled to the country.

EU officials have said three cases of E.coli linked to the German outbreak have also been reported in the United States.

E.coli can be passed from person to person but the ECDC's Coulombier said there was no evidence this was happening in any significant numbers in this outbreak. Health experts are recommending strict hygiene measures such as hand washing and thorough cleaning and cooking of food.

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EU Vegetables Destroyed as Deadly E. Coli Outbreak Halts Trade

June 03, 2011, 12:11 PM EDT By Tony C. Dreibus

(Adds Copa-Cogeca comments starting in seventh paragraph.)

June 3 (Bloomberg) -- European Union vegetable supplies are being destroyed as demand is curbed by the deadliest outbreak of E. coli on record, with producers losing millions of euros a day because of trade restrictions.

Cucumber, lettuce and tomato prices are tumbling and orders are being canceled, said Philippe Binard, general delegate of Freshfel Europe, which represents the industry. The market is at “an alarming standstill,” according to the Brussels-based group. The losses are forcing some farmers out of business, said Copa-Cogeca, an agricultural lobby group based in Brussels.

“This is having a serious impact because we’re dealing with perishable products,” Binard said by phone today. “We can’t store it and say that in six months, when the market is better, we’ll ship it.”

Infections have been found in 10 European nations and the World Health Organization says at least 16 people died. Some have a rare strain which releases a toxin damaging kidneys and other organs. While German officials are advising consumers to avoid raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce, the original source is most likely cattle, said Rowland Cobbold, a veterinary public health researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Russia, which according to Freshfel buys 400 million euros ($580 million) of EU vegetables a year, banned imports yesterday. That contravenes World Trade Organization rules, Fernando Valenzuela, head of the EU delegation to Russia, was cited by RIA Novosti as saying. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said today he won’t “poison people” to satisfy WTO rules.

‘Very Isolated’

“Russia is really overreacting to the situation,” Binard said. “The ban applies to all EU countries and to all vegetables, when we know the problem seems to be very isolated to some parts of Germany.”

Spain’s agriculture industry is losing 200 million euros a week and German farmers are losing about 1 million euros a day, said Amanda Cheesley, a spokeswoman for Copa-Cogeca. That should decline after cucumbers from the southwestern European country were ruled out as the source of the bacteria, she said. None tested positive for the type causing the outbreak, the EU said in a statement.

’Nothing Sold’

“The Spanish were the most hard hit so they’re quite angry,” Cheesley said. “When you have an announcement like that, consumption falls for all cucumbers in all member states. In Belgium on Tuesday, cucumber sales were 25 percent for 25 percent of the price. In Spain, nothing sold. Hopefully it will pick up a bit now that they’ve cleared Spanish cucumbers.”

Farmers in Italy, the biggest European vegetable producer, harvested 13.65 million metric tons in 2009, the most recent data from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization show. Spain was the second-biggest with 13.63 million tons. China is the world’s biggest vegetable producer followed by India, according to the UN.

Italian cucumbers sold for 15 cents (22 U.S. cents) a kilogram (2.2 pounds) as of May 29, compared with 70 cents at the end of April, according to data from Instituto di Servizi per il Merca.

‘Supply Chain’

“This is impacting the whole supply chain,” Binard said. “The producer is obviously the first to be affected. Behind him are the people who are packing and shipping and the importers and the wholesalers and the retailers are all being affected. A lot of transport is being canceled and it’s not just in Germany, it’s a situation affecting the whole of Europe.”

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by telephone yesterday and agreed that the two countries will try to get aid for European farmers affected, according to an e-mailed statement from the press office of the German government.

--Editors: Sharon Lindores, Nicholas Larkin

To contact the editor responsible for this story Tony Dreibus at tdreibus@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net.

View the original article here