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P 6-6-11: “In a surprising U-turn, German officials said initial tests published Monday provided no evidence that sprouts from an organic farm in northern Germany were the cause of the country’s deadly E. coli outbreak.”

Quotations attributable to Mark A. Kastel, Codirector and Senior Farm Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute, a farm policy research group based in Cornucopia, Wisconsin:

One of the suspected factors in this tragic outbreak of foodborne illness (now preliminarily cleared) was sprouted seeds from an organic farm. There’s a history of pathogenic contamination of fresh food, including sprouts. Correcting statements made over the weekend, the German government stated on Monday, June 6 that it has not found conclusive evidence that the deadly E. coli outbreak can be linked to sprouts from an organic farm.

Regardless of which food turns out to have been contaminated with deadly E. coli, it is important to remember that the underlying cause of new, highly toxic strains of foodborne pathogens seems to be the relatively new practice of raising beef and dairy cattle in highly concentrated factory farm conditions, instead of on pasture.

Beef and dairy cows, which are ruminants, evolved to eat grass, not the high-grain rations that they are given in feedlots, which changes the pH in their rumen and has been linked to the creation of new and more deadly E. coli pathogens. There is nothing inherently dangerous about raw spinach, raw cucumbers or raw sprouts, which are dangerous only when they are contaminated with manure from industrial-style factory farms.