WHO says E. coli strain responsible for European outbreak is new strain never detected before

[Magda Hassan]

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43285439/n...-outbreak/

HAMBURG, Germany German officials say initial tests show that sprouts from an organic farm in the country's north are not the cause of the E. coli outbreak.

Must be the salmon mousse.

[Peter Lemkin]

Now it is announced that is was NOT the bean sprouts...and they do NOT know what it was.....starts to me to look like an op......but it still could be a natural event....however the many false pointing at various vegetables is very odd, indeed. :jawdrop:

[Jan Klimkowski]

Source.

German officials had said they were confident that sprouts from the organic Gärtenhof farm in Lower Saxony were behind the spread of a particularly virulent strain of the bacterium. There were "strong and clear indications" that the farm was involved, the federal health minister, Daniel Bahr, said.

(snip)

Lower Saxony's agriculture minister, Gert Lindemann, said earlier it was possible the contaminated produce had found its way into a variety of foods but there was a "clear trail" to the farm. "It is the most convincing … source for the E coli illnesses. This is for us the most plausible cause of the illness."

After exterminating entire harvests of cucumbers, tomatoes and bean sprouts, these fools now declare we have no fucking idea what's going on:

Lower Saxony's agriculture ministry said 23 of 40 samples from the farm had now tested negative for the E coli, with 17 more tests still being done.

(snip)

The owner of the sprout farm, in the village of Steddorf, near the small town of Bienenbüttel, 40 miles south of Hamburg, had said he was baffled at being implicated, saying there were no animals or animal products on the site.

"The salad sprouts are grown only from seeds and water, and they aren't fertilised at all," Klaus Verbeck told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung. "There aren't any animal fertilisers used in other areas on the farm either."

What was that about GM maize earlier in this thread...... :unclesam:

[Peter Lemkin]

I can tell you that here in Europe the shelves and stalls of vegetables of all kinds [as well as many fruits] are going unsold and prices are falling - lives are being damaged. What I don't understand it how they could point at Spanish cukes and then German bean sprouts if they didn't have any evidence of that!?!?! Jan, your speculation of GM something could be possible, but is not likely the source. I think as now this epidemic seems to be declining, they may never find the source....BUT...the source is still out there and will be back!!! In the USA, last, it was spinach, here in Europe it is unknown. Food, once vital for health is now dangerous to ones health; much as water, air and soil have become. We have really destroyed our Planet with technology and greed. If it isn't a deliberate poisoning as a black bag op, I'd put my money on a very large animal factory that sells some of its waste for fertilizer. :mexican:

[Carsten Wiethoff]

In German television there is hardly another news item now for weeks, but there is also growing frustration that the source of the infection has not been clearly identified yet.

But there are indications. First the spanish cucumbers: the poison from EHEC bacteria has been found on three cucumbers, two of which have been traced to two different spanish producers, the third has initially been reported to be from Holland. Meanwhile laboratory tests have identified the bacteria to be not the variant causing the current outbreak, especially the kidney complications.
Then the sprouts: All of the major outbreaks were from Restaurants or kitchens being supplied by the identified producer of sprouts. In one case a broken package of the sprouts has been found in the fridge of a victim. I heard the interview with a survivor, who clearly identified a specific restaurant and a specific meal containing sprouts as the source of her infection. The restaurant was involved in several other infection cases as well.
It is not clear how the bacteria came to the sprouts, it may even be that the seeds that are imported from Asia have been infected and that the infected batch has already been completely processed and sold and eaten.

And seriously, I do not see any indication for a delibrate operation in this case, nor any plausible motivation. And I continue to eat normally.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Jan, your speculation of GM something could be possible, but is not likely the source.

Peter - with respect, my speculation is not that GM foodstuffs are the source of this outbreak. My speculation refers back to Magda's post #6 earlier in this thread.

In German television there is hardly another news item now for weeks, but there is also growing frustration that the source of the infection has not been clearly identified yet.

But there are indications. First the spanish cucumbers: the poison from EHEC bacteria has been found on three cucumbers, two of which have been traced to two different spanish producers, the third has initially been reported to be from Holland. Meanwhile laboratory tests have identified the bacteria to be not the variant causing the current outbreak, especially the kidney complications.
Then the sprouts: All of the major outbreaks were from Restaurants or kitchens being supplied by the identified producer of sprouts. In one case a broken package of the sprouts has been found in the fridge of a victim. I heard the interview with a survivor, who clearly identified a specific restaurant and a specific meal containing sprouts as the source of her infection. The restaurant was involved in several other infection cases as well.
It is not clear how the bacteria came to the sprouts, it may even be that the seeds that are imported from Asia have been infected and that the infected batch has already been completely processed and sold and eaten.

Carsten - with respect, none of that is anywhere near sufficient evidence to declare an entire country's cucumbers suspect nor point the finger at a specific farm.

All those evidential trails are equally, if not more, consistent with the infection having occurred after the vegetables have left the farms, at a later stage in the food chain.

Indeed, that evidence strongly suggests poor hygiene in the restaurant, and that bacteria may be festering there.

And seriously, I do not see any indication for a delibrate operation in this case, nor any plausible motivation. And I continue to eat normally.

See Magda's post #6.

Think the Strategy of Tension.

Note that Russia has closed its borders to European vegetables.

None of this is proof. However, I am certainly not ruling out deliberate foul play.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Carsten - with respect, none of that is anywhere near sufficient evidence to declare an entire country's cucumbers suspect nor point the finger at a specific farm.

All those evidential trails are equally, if not more, consistent with the infection having occurred after the vegetables have left the farms, at a later stage in the food chain.

Indeed, that evidence strongly suggests poor hygiene in the restaurant, and that bacteria may be festering there.

Yes, this is certainly the biggest legitimate criticism of the German crisis management. To announce names of countries and producers with indications, but without proof, is like declaring a suspect guilty without any trial at all.
In this case it seems to be unexpectedly difficult to find proof and it may be that it will never be found. There is of course the legitimate demand of the public to be informed of possible risks and ways to avoid them and on the other hand the legitimate interests of vegetable producers and many others to remain innocent until proven guilty and not carry a financial and moral penalty without having done anything wrong.
BTW I am sure that all the restaurants and other places where people possibly got infected have been tested thoroughly already and if anything had been found it would have been reported.
In a way I find Putin's import ban a logical reaction, even if it can be argued that it declares all European vegetables guilty without even the slightest proof, and in this case it is likely more an action of a man wanting to appear strong and in control than a responsible reaction for the health of the people in Russia.
Currently I classify this as a strongly local problem with only minimal chances of a people-to-people infection, so for myself I do not take any special action. But this is everybody's personal choice, I heard from people trying to avoid all non-cooked food, even bananas, and certainly a lot of people reduce fresh vegetable intake.

When you think in the line of "strategy of tension" this implies that there are forces that benefit from a general fear of poisonous food and dangerous infectious diseases, I don't think that this outbreak is different in this way from others like bird flu, swine flu, mad cow disease and many other recent food/health scandals/outbrakes. I do not say that these forces do not exist, but currently I do not have a clear picture, what, besides more control, could be the point. But maybe this is the point.
How should one resist a strategy of tension? Maybe by not being hysterical and waiting for proof, one way or the other.

[Christer Forslund]

When you think in the line of "strategy of tension" this implies that there are forces that benefit from a general fear of poisonous food and dangerous infectious diseases

Maybe so. Why not read what Mike Adams have to say?
http://www.naturalnews.com/032622_ecoli_...ering.html
Monday, June 06, 2011 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger / Editor of NaturalNews.com

Even as the veggie blame game is now under way across the EU, where a super resistant strain of e.coli is sickening patients and filling hospitals in Germany, virtually no one is talking about how e.coli could have magically become resistant to eight different classes of antibiotic drugs and then suddenly appeared in the food supply.

This particular e.coli variation is a member of the O104 strain, and O104 strains are almost never (normally) resistant to antibiotics. In order for them to acquire this resistance, they must be repeatedly exposed to antibiotics in order to provide the "mutation pressure" that nudges them toward complete drug immunity.

So if you're curious about the origins of such a strain, you can essentially reverse engineer the genetic code of the e.coli and determine fairly accurately which antibiotics it was exposed to during its development. This step has now been done (see below), and when you look at the genetic decoding of this O104 strain now threatening food consumers across the EU, a fascinating picture emerges of how it must have come into existence.

The genetic code reveals the history

When scientists at Germany's Robert Koch Institute decoded the genetic makeup of the O104 strain, they found it to be resistant to all the following classes and combinations of antibiotics:

penicillins
tetracycline
nalidixic acid
trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazol
cephalosporins
amoxicillin / clavulanic acid
piperacillin-sulbactam
piperacillin-tazobactam

In addition, this O104 strain posses an ability to produce special enzymes that give it what might be called "bacteria superpowers" known technically as ESBLs:

"Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamases (ESBLs) are enzymes that can be produced by bacteria making them resistant to cephalosporins e.g. cefuroxime, cefotaxime and ceftazidime - which are the most widely used antibiotics in many hospitals," explains the Health Protection Agency in the UK (http://www.hpa.org.uk/Topics/Infect...).

On top of that, this O104 strain possesses two genes -- TEM-1 and CTX-M-15 -- that "have been making doctors shudder since the 1990s," reports The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...). And why do they make doctors shudder? Because they're so deadly that many people infected with such bacteria experience critical organ failure and simply die.

Bioengineering a deadly superbug

So how, exactly, does a bacterial strain come into existence that's resistant to over a dozen antibiotics in eight different drug classes and features two deadly gene mutations plus ESBL enzyme capabilities?

There's really only one way this happens (and only one way) -- you have to expose this strain of e.coli to all eight classes of antibiotics drugs. Usually this isn't done at the same time, of course: You first expose it to penicillin and find the surviving colonies which are resistant to penicillin. You then take those surviving colonies and expose them to tetracycline. The surviving colonies are now resistant to both penicillin and tetracycline. You then expose them to a sulfa drug and collect the surviving colonies from that, and so on. It is a process of genetic selection done in a laboratory with a desired outcome. This is essentially how some bioweapons are engineered by the U.S. Army in its laboratory facility in Ft. Detrick, Maryland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation...).

Although the actual process is more complicated than this, the upshot is that creating a strain of e.coli that's resistant to eight classes of antibiotics requires repeated, sustained expose to those antibiotics. It is virtually impossible to imagine how this could happen all by itself in the natural world. For example, if this bacteria originated in the food (as we've been told), then where did it acquire all this antibiotic resistance given the fact that antibiotics are not used in vegetables?

When considering the genetic evidence that now confronts us, it is difficult to imagine how this could happen "in the wild." While resistance to a single antibiotic is common, the creation of a strain of e.coli that's resistant to eight different classes of antibiotics -- in combination -- simply defies the laws of genetic permutation and combination in the wild. Simply put, this superbug e.coli strain could not have been created in the wild. And that leaves only one explanation for where it really came from: the lab.

Engineered and then released into the wild

The evidence now points to this deadly strain of e.coli being engineered and then either being released into the food supply or somehow escaping from a lab and entering the food supply inadvertently. If you disagree with that conclusion -- and you're certainly welcome to -- then you are forced to conclude that this octobiotic superbug (immune to eight classes of antibiotics) developed randomly on its own... and that conclusion is far scarier than the "bioengineered" explanation because it means octobiotic superbugs can simply appear anywhere at any time without cause. That would be quite an exotic theory indeed.

My conclusion actually makes more sense: This strain of e.coli was almost certainly engineered and then released into the food supply for a specific purpose. What would that purpose be? It's obvious, I hope.

It's all problem, reaction, solution at work here. First cause a PROBLEM (a deadly strain of e.coli in the food supply). Then wait for the public REACTION (huge outcry as the population is terrorized by e.coli). In response to that, enact your desired SOLUTION (total control over the global food supply and the outlawing of raw sprouts, raw milk and raw vegetables).

That's what this is all about, of course. The FDA relied on the same phenomenon in the USA when pushing for its recent "Food Safety Modernization Act" which essentially outlaws small family organic farms unless they lick the boots of FDA regulators. The FDA was able to crush farm freedom in America by piggybacking on the widespread fear that followed e.coli outbreaks in the U.S. food supply. When people are afraid, remember, it's not difficult to get them to agree to almost any level of regulatory tyranny. And making people afraid of their food is a simple matter... a few government press releases emailed to the mainstream media news affiliates is all it takes.

Food as weapons of war - created by Big Pharma?

By the way, the most likely explanation of where this strain of e.coli was bioengineered is that the drug giants came up with it in their own labs. Who else has access to all the antibiotics and equipment needed to manage the targeted mutations of potentially thousands of e.coli colonies? The drug companies are uniquely positioned to both carry out this plot and profit from it. In other words, they have the means and the motive to engage in precisely such actions.

Aside from the drug companies, perhaps only the infectious disease regulators themselves have this kind of laboratory capacity. The CDC, for example, could probably pull this off if they really wanted to.

The proof that somebody bioengineered this e.coli strain is written right in the DNA of the bacteria. That's forensic evidence, and what it reveals cannot be denied. This strain underwent repeated and prolonged exposure to eight different classes of antibiotics, and then it somehow managed to appear in the food supply. How do you get to that if not through a well-planned scheme carried out by rogue scientists? There is no such thing as "spontaneous mutation" into a strain that is resistant to the top eight classes of brand-name antibiotic drugs being sold by Big Pharma today. Such mutations have to be deliberate.

Once again, if you disagree with this assessment, then what you're saying is that NO, it wasn't done deliberately... it happened accidentally! And again, I'm saying that's even scarier! Because that means the antibiotic contamination of our world is now at such an extreme level of overkill that a strain of e.coli in the wild can be saturated with eight different classes of antibiotics to the point where it naturally develops into its own deadly superbug. If that's what people believe, then that's almost a scarier theory than the bioengineering explanation!

A new era has begun: Bioweapons in your food

But in either case -- no matter what you believe -- the simple truth is that the world is now facing a new era of global superbug strains of bacteria that can't be treated with any known pharmaceutical. They can all, of course, be readily killed with colloidal silver, which is exactly why the FDA and world health regulators have viciously attacked colloidal silver companies all these years: They can't have the public getting its hands on natural antibiotics that really work, you see. That would defeat the whole purpose of making everybody sick in the first place.

In fact, these strains of e.coli superbugs can be quite readily treated with a combination of natural full-spectrum antibiotics from plants such as garlic, ginger, onions and medicinal herbs. On top of that, probiotics can help balance the flora of the digestive tract and "crowd out" the deadly e.coli that might happen by. A healthy immune system and well-functioning digestive tract can fight off an e.coli superbug infection, but that's yet another fact the medical community doesn't want you to know. They much prefer you to remain a helpless victim lying in the hospital, waiting to die, with no options available to you. That's "modern medicine" for ya. They cause the problems that they claim to treat, and then they won't even treat you with anything that works in the first place.

Nearly all the deaths now attributable to this e.coli outbreak are easily and readily avoidable. These are deaths of ignorance. But even more, they may also be deaths from a new era of food-based bioweapons unleashed by either a group of mad scientists or an agenda-driven institution that has declared war on the human population.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Christer, thanks for posting this.
While I could verify the genetic information in the article (from http://www.rki.de/cln_160/nn_217400/EN/H...104_H4.pdf)
several issues come to my mind.
1. If it would be so clear and provable that this is a product from a biolab, a weapon, instead of an unintentional consequence of our way of agriculture, it could not fulfill the stated purpose. Instead the people would demand a ban of bioweapons and the head of the people responsible. Doubt and plausible denial is essential.
2. Once a person is infected, antibiotics resistance is irrelevant, because an EHEC infection should not be treated with antibiotics.
3. Colloidal silver is at least contrioversial because of its adverse health effects and the FDA has banned sellers from claiming any therapeutic or preventive value for it.

The baseline remains the question how we should react to this and similar events. Fear is rarely a good advisor, but without fear we would all be dead.

[Peter Lemkin]

One thing is clear, Public Health testing of the food supply [in all countries] is lacking - not that it might have caught this [although it might have!], but such regular testing and surprise [unannounced] random testing with STIFF PENALTIES would make all persons along the food chain be more cautious. Second, the big animal and plant factories/plantations have long been known to be breeding grounds for troubles, like this - as have GM experiments [both by design and accident]. Third, the leakage of antibiotics into the food and water has created resistant bacteria - and is perhaps the greatest danger. I could go on. Cows and pigs are fed ground-up cows and pigs to eat along with plant matter. This is not natural and helps to create such Frankenstein bugs. Manure is good fertilizer, but not when it comes from industrial scale, chemical ridden, antibiotic ridden sources. Only when from organic small-scale farms. Others, if used at all, need to be heat sterilized, first. I don't discount that some pharmaceutical company has developed a new super-antibiotic which they will soon announce to save the day...and had some in their minions start this mini-epidemic to give them the needed sales pitch. It could also be biowarfare on a small scale for political or economic reasons. Lastly, the lesson should be learned, NOT to point to a specific vegetable or farm, until one is sure. If in doubt and awaiting testing, call a temporary and non-finger-pointing moratorium on a class of things [and pay those effected some compensation - unless it is found that they violated safe farming or health laws.]