Superbug in salads: the outbreak goes political

Racing to curb a killer food bug, Germany set up a national task force to hunt the source of the toxic E. coli strain that had killed 17 people and sickened more than 1,700 since early May. But by the first week of June, the outbreak was no longer just a public-health crisis. It was a trade war.

Russia had banned all raw fruit and vegetable imports from the European Union, and Vladimir Putin was in no mood to back down. "We cannot poison our people for the sake of some spirit," he said, dismissing EU demands to lift the embargo. The EU's envoy to Moscow called the ban unjustified and a breach of WTO rules — awkward timing for Russia, which was pressing to join the trade body. The stakes were concrete: EU countries had exported 594 million euros worth of vegetables to Russia the previous year.

Spain, meanwhile, was counting its own losses. German officials had initially blamed Spanish cucumbers before tests cleared them, and Spanish exporters — watching European shoppers shun their produce — were talking about seeking compensation from Berlin. Chancellor Angela Merkel telephoned Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to discuss the fallout.

The science remained grim and murky. The strain, a rare Shiga toxin-producing E. coli never before seen in an outbreak of this scale, clings to intestinal walls and pumps out toxins that can trigger bloody diarrhea and kidney failure. Health institutes stressed the basics — wash vegetables, wash hands — while scientists struggled to trace contamination through salads assembled from produce of many different growers. The WHO noted that all but two cases were in people who lived in or had recently visited northern Germany, with Hamburg at the epicenter.

In Moscow, shops prepared to dump EU vegetables. In Berlin, shoppers like 43-year-old programmer Max Fehrer kept buying them — just cooked. "I wash and wash and wash my vegetables," he said. "You can't stop eating them, but I have children."

The outbreak would later be traced to fenugreek sprouts, not cucumbers — but in the first week of June, with the source still unknown and the case count climbing, the cucumbers, the trade bans, and the blame game were the story.