A few days ago I posted – again – about the ongoing tragedy in Europe and the Untied States on the most deadly, and one of the largest, E. coli outbreaks in history. Although European officials (mostly German) originally pointed to Spanish cucumbers as the source (and also urged everyone to not eat tomatoes or lettuce), sprouts and then sprout seeds (specifically fenugreek seeds) came under suspicion after E. coli O104:H4 illnesses surfaced in France in people who had not visited Germany.

On June 29 the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control published these paragraphs regarding the traceback investigation:

Food trace-back investigations at the EU level (original version)

… The tracing back is progressing and has thus far shown that fenugreek seeds imported from Egypt either in 2009 and/or 2010 by the company AGA SAAT GMBH are implicated in both outbreaks. There is still much uncertainty about whether this is truly the common cause of all the infections as there are currently no positive bacteriological results. In particular, the 2009 lot appears to be implicated in the outbreak in France and the 2010 has been considered to be implicated in the German outbreak. …

All this is being further investigated. In particular, an investigation on the distribution of seeds from these lots throughout Germany and Europe by AGA SAAT has been urgently requested. The export by AGA SAAT of some of its imported seeds to another company in the UK (from where seeds were exported to France) demonstrates the necessity of this information. …

Then, without notifying the public, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control edited and republished those same paragraphs to read:

Food trace-back investigations at the EU level (edited version)

… The tracing back is progressing and has thus far shown that fenugreek seeds imported from Egypt either in 2009 and/or 2010 are implicated in both outbreaks. There is still much uncertainty about whether this is truly the common cause of all the infections as there are currently no positive bacteriological results. In particular, the 2009 lot appears to be implicated in the outbreak in France and the 2010 has been considered to be implicated in the German outbreak. …

All this is being further investigated. In particular, an investigation on the distribution of seeds from these lots throughout Germany and Europe has been urgently requested. The export of some of the seeds imported from Egypt to another company in the UK (from where seeds were exported to France) demonstrates the necessity of this information. …

The changes, according to Caroline Daamen in External Communications for the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, were made because:

In the initial risk assessment posted on the website, EFSA and ECDC reported information that had been made available to support the ongoing outbreak investigation. However, some key partners involved felt that it may unnecessarily harm the company to publish its name while the investigations are still ongoing. So it was thought more appropriate to remove the name of the company from the final report.

We hope that this helps to clarify why the name of the company is not included anymore.

I would love to see or hear the emails, correspondence and phone calls between EFSA and ECDC and AGA SAAT GMBH.

Enjoy the email back and forth between me and AGA SAAT GMBH counsel:Continue Reading EFSA and ECDC Change Published Risk Assessment because “some key partners involved felt that it may unnecessarily harm the company to publish its name while the investigations (into E. coli O104:H4 Outbreak) are still ongoing”