US: German court: compensate cucumber grower wrongly accused in E. coli outbreak
Food Safety News: A court in Hamburg, Germany, has decided that a Spanish vegetable grower and distributor should be compensated for losses sustained after its cucumbers were wrongly named as the likely source of a 2011 outbreak of the rare and deadly E. coli O104:H4.
Near the peak of the outbreak that eventually sickened 4,075 and caused 50 deaths in 16 countries, Hamburg health officials went public with their suspicions about the coop’s cucumbers possibly being the source. As a result, numerous Spanish cucumber growers took a hard hit — perhaps as much as $200 million a week — before the investigation determined that fenugreek sprouts were really to blame.