The head of Germany's leading fresh produce association has sharply criticised the country's authorities for allegedly mismanaging its response to the ongoing E.coli crisis.
Andreas Brügger, managing director of the German Fruit Trade Association (DFHV), said officials in Berlin and Brussels had failed to consult with the fresh produce industry on how best to respond to the crisis.
He also poured scorn on an embarrassing u-turn by the German health ministry, which saw it revise an earlier, erroneous warning that Spanish cucumbers had been responsible for carrying E.coli into the German market.
Such actions, he said, had caused significant and potentially long-lasting damage to the German and European fresh produce business.
'This has nothing to do with consumer protection,' said Brügger. 'The fearmongering has led to a reluctance or indeed refusal to buy not only cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce, but all fruits and vegetables.'
He also bemoaned the authorities' lack of consultation with industry bodies.
'We know the trade routes, we know the producers and the growing practices. Now, after having initiated three weeks of frantic recalls, we have sheer instability.
'The economic damage, which has been caused by poor and – as in the meantime has been discovered – false information, is so far difficult to estimate.
'Had the authorities from the outset sought to consult with retailers and producers about the possible sources of infection, much faster and targeted action would have been possible.'
After such a long time, Brügger said, the probability of finding the actual source of the infection, wherever it may be, had decreased considerably.
As news of a number of deaths in northern Germany linked to the E.coli outbreak began to emerge at the end of May, Germany's Robert Koch Institute – a federal body responsible for disease control and prevention – recommended that consumers in the country avoid eating cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce.
Subsequently, Spanish cucumbers were identified by EU and German officials as the source of the contamination, only for that conclusion to then be withdrawn when it was discovered that the strain of E.coli found on three cucumbers supplied by two Spanish companies was in fact not the same as the one which had caused the deaths.
'De facto, we are back at the very beginning. Other foods, animals or people cannot be ruled out as the carrier,' warned Brügger.
'Yet the authorities stubbornly maintain their warning on vegetables even though there are hundreds of test results emerging from the business here and abroad: all with negative results.'
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