Lebanon Bans EU Vegetable Imports on E. Coli Fears
Lebanon imposed a ban on Friday on all vegetable imports from the European Union in response to an outbreak of E. coli poisoning that has killed at least 18 people, caretaker Agriculture Minister Hussein Hajj Hassan said.
"We have decided to ban the import of all types of vegetables from Europe," Hajj Hassan told Agence France Presse.
He said the ban posed "no risk of shortages on the local market," as Lebanon could count on its own production and that of neighboring Jordan and Syria.
Later Friday, the European Union slammed Lebanon’s decision, saying "any total embargo on European vegetables is disproportionate."
Earlier this week, Russia banned all vegetable imports from the EU, sparking an angry response from the 27-nation bloc which warned the move was at odds with its bid to join the World Trade Organization.
Like Russia, Lebanon is not currently a WTO member.
Officials in Germany’s northern city of Hamburg initially blamed organic Spanish cucumbers but tests this week showed that while they carried bacteria, it was not the strain responsible for the contamination.
Despite the false alarm over Spanish produce, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany's national disease center, still advises consumers to avoid cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce, particularly in the north of the country.
The EU's Reference Laboratory for E. coli in Rome said on Friday that scientific tests have failed to support the hypothesis that contaminated vegetables are behind the deadly bacteria outbreak in Europe.
"Alarmism over the consumption of vegetables is not justified ... since laboratory analyses do not support the hypothesis that contaminated vegetables were the source of the infection," the laboratory said in a statement.
The laboratory, part of Italy's Higher Institute for Health (ISS), said it would be sufficient to follow basic kitchen hygiene to avoid infection, such as washing your hands after handling food and ensuring knives are clean.
"The only previous detection of a similar strain, although with a different serotype was carried out in ISS laboratories in relation to a small epidemic of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) in France," it said.
HUS, a kidney disease, usually affects children and can be life-threatening.
The laboratory said the strain "cannot be considered mutant ... but rather a strain originating from the acquisition of new genes."
The current outbreak has now spread to 12 countries and appears to be stabilizing, a senior German doctor said Friday, as the death toll rose to 19.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel meanwhile defended an earlier false alarm on organic Spanish cucumbers that angered Madrid, as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he would not allow Russians to "get poisoned" by EU vegetables.
All but one of the fatalities since the outbreak of enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) poisoning began last month have occurred in Germany. A patient, who died in Sweden, had recently returned from there.
Regional German health authorities have reported more than 2,000 cases of people falling ill with EHEC poisoning, with symptoms including stomach cramps, diarrhea, fever and vomiting.
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