Note to Anne: Home-Sprouting Seeds Is Not Safe Alternative

Whenever I speak with my husband’s 80-something Auntie Anne, I know that the subject will eventually turn to recipes and food safety. From grav lax to ganache, I’m her “go-to” gal. The last time we spoke, the topic was sprouts.

“I understand,” Anne said, “that sprouts in the supermarket are risky, and I don’t buy them anymore. But why can’t I buy the seeds at a health food store and sprout them myself?”

I explained that the seeds she finds in the health food store might be contaminated with Salmonella or E. coli.

“Then why,” she asked, ” can people eat the seeds without becoming sick?”

Putting aside the question as to how many people actually eat raw alfalfa seeds, arugula seeds, or mung beans, Anne’s question was a reasonable one. And the answer is in the arithmetic.

When a pathogenic microbe such as Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7 or E. coli O104:H4 is found in a batch of seeds, the level of contamination is typically very low. Researchers at the California Department of Health Services reported in 2001 (Journal of Food Protection, Vol. 64, No. 8, 2001, Pages 1240–1243) that they found Salmonella in contaminated batches of alfalfa seeds at levels as low as 0.07 per 100g – just a single live Salmonella in 3.15 pounds (1.4Kg) of seeds – and as high as 1.8 per 100g (or about one live Salmonella in 2 ounces of seeds).

If the level of pathogens in/on contaminated seeds is so low, why are sprouts such a problem? It’s all in the way the sprouts are produced.

Typical growing conditions for sprouts:- Moist, warm temperatures (typically, 70-80ºF)
Typical growing conditions for Salmonella and E. coli:- Moist, warm temperatures (optimally, 95-100ºF, but grow well in the 70-80ºF range)

And that’s the problem. The conditions required for sprouting seeds also encourage abundant growth of bacteria, including Salmonella and E. coli. A single Salmonella or E. coli cell can produce more than one million offspring during the first 10 hours of sprouting.

This risk is not just theoretical. Some of the German outbreak victims ate raw sprouts that they produced at home.

Another question I have been asked is how long pathogens such as Salmonella and E. coli can survive on or in seeds used for sprouting. The answer, in a word, is “years.”

The same study that documented the number of Salmonella present in the alfalfa seeds also mentioned that Salmonella had remained viable in the seeds after two years of storage at room temperature in the dark.

E. coli O157:H7 is just as rugged. In 1995, two Japanese sprouting facilities purchased radish seeds from the same US distributor. Between May and December 1996, more than 9,400 people in Japan became infected with a single outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7, and 12 people died. Most of the outbreak victims were school children. The source of the infection was traced to radish sprouts produced in one of the two Japanese sprouting facilities.

Eight months later, in 1997, Japanese health authorities investigated another spurt of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses. The second series of illnesses was traced to radish sprouts produced in the second Japanese sprouting facility. The outbreak strain was identical to the 1996 outbreak strain. Clearly, this strain of E. coli O157:H7 survived on or in the US-produced radish seeds for more than a year.

It’s too soon for anyone to have determined the long-term survival of E. coli O104:H4; however, I would be astonished if it was very different from the others.

To summarize:

The ideal conditions for sprouting seeds and for growing bacteria overlap.
Bacteria will multiply into the millions per gram during the sprouting process.
Salmonella and E. coli can survive for 1-2 years – or longer – on or inside the dry seeds.

Finally, my advice to Auntie Anne – and to anyone else who is interested: Do not eat raw sprouts.

Well-Traveled Fenugreek Seeds Behind E. coli Outbreaks

A single batch of fenugreek seeds from Egypt is the ‘most likely common link’ between the 2011 German and French E. coli O104:H4 outbreaks, according to a Technical Report issued today by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

The European Union has withdrawn Egyptian seeds from the market, and has temporarily banned the import of certain types of seeds and beans from Egypt. Member States have been instructed to insure that all lots of fenugreek seeds obtained from the implicated Egyptian exporter between 2009 and 2011 are withdrawn, sampled and destroyed. Further import of Egyptian seeds and beans for sprouting are suspended until October 31, 2011.

Between them, the two outbreaks have accounted for 896 cases of hemolytic syndrome and an additional 3,241 cases of bloody diarrhea in 16 countries since May 1st, 2011 – 4,137 reported cases in all. Fifty people have died – 48 in Germany, one in Sweden and one in the USA. It’s likely that an unknown number of milder gastrointestinal illnesses also can be blamed on this outbreak strain.

Although the EFSA has concluded that Egyptian fenugreek seeds are the most likely culprit, Egypt’s Ministry of Agriculture was quite correct in stating last week that the implicated seeds were shipped to Holland, not to Germany, France or the UK. Here’s what happened.

On November 24, 2009, a consignment of fenugreek seeds (Lot #48088) departed by boat from the Egyptian port of Damietta. The boat arrived at Antwerp (Belgium) and the consignment – still packed in a sealed customs’ container – was sent by barge to Rotterdam (the Netherlands), where it cleared customs.

The sealed container then was trucked to Germany, where the German Importer (unidentified in the EFSA report) redistributed most of the seeds (now identified as Lot #6832) and retained 75 kg in storage. In October 2010, the German Importer received another lot (Lot #8266) of seeds from the same Egyptian exporter.

The German Importer of the fenugreek seeds supplied approximately two-thirds of the 2009 shipment to a distributor in Germany (also unnamed in the report).

The Distributor, in turn, sold 75 kg of the seeds to the German sprout producer – Gärtnerhof Bienenbüttel – implicated in the German E. coli O104:H4 outbreak. The German Importer also supplied approximately 400 kg of the same batch of seeds to a UK seed supplier/repacker (identified in French reports as Thompson & Morgan).

Thompson & Morgan repackaged the seeds in 50g packages (now identified as Lot #DRG1041132/10) and supplied them to a distributor in France, who resold the seeds to about 200 French garden centers. One 50g packet of the seeds was the source of the contaminated sprouts that caused the French outbreak cluster in the Bordeaux region. In addition to the seeds that were supplied to France, UK-packaged seeds from the implicated lot were also shipped to Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

It’s likely that at least some contaminated seeds are still either on the market or in the hands of consumers who produce their own sprouts. Trace-forward investigations have determined that the seeds were distributed by the German Importer as follows:

10 500 kg were received by a single large distributor in Germany, who redistributed the seeds to 70 companies (54 in Germany and 16 in 11 other European countries;
3 550 kg were received by 9 other companies in Germany;
400 kg were received by one company in the UK;
250 kg were forwarded via an Austrian distributor and received by one company in Austria; and
375 kg were received by one company in Spain.

Contaminated seeds may also have been exported from Egypt to other countries. Play it safe – do not eat raw sprouts.

E. coli O104:H4 – Europe’s Name, Blame and Shame Game

“It really is public health malpractice not to name these companies when they’re involved, particularly when there’s a potential risk to the public as a result of their product still being on the market.”

– Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, Director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, publisher of CIDRAP News

A curious thing has happened on June 29th.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), in conjunction with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), released a risk assessment on the E. coli O104:H4 cases reported from the Bordeaux region of France. Fenugreek sprouting seeds – supplied by the British firm Thompson & Morgan – were implicated in the French outbreak.

The report named AGA SAAT GMBH of Dusseldorf, Germany as the supplier both of the seeds packaged and sold by Thompson & Morgan, and of the seeds implicated in the far larger and very deadly German outbreak of hemolytic uremic syndrome and bloody diarrhea.

The seeds, according to the report, originated from Egypt. The Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture has denied that Egypt had exported fenugreek seeds to Germany.

But this isn’t the curious thing that happened. What’s curious is that – several hours after the report was first issued – ECDC quietly replaced its initial report with an edited version that omitted the name of the German company, according to a news story released this evening by CIDRAP News. CIDRAP has posted a link to both the original ECDC report (see page 3 of the report) and the revised version.

Why did ECDC take this action? Here’s what CIDRAP has to say:

In response to a query today about the reason for removing the company’s name, ECDC spokeswoman Caroline Daamen told CIDRAP News by e-mail, “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.”

Both CIDRAP News and attorney/blogger Bill Marler – who also reported the story -have received email messages from AGA SAAT’s attorney, “reserving the right” to take legal measures if they do not delete the company’s name from their respective articles.

I have been critical in the past of the EU policy of not naming manufacturers, distributors, or brand names of foods that are listed in its Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF). But this back-door removal of the name of an implicated company from an already published report takes the cake.

In contrast to this sorry German saga, Thompson & Morgan – the British company that supplied the packaged seeds implicated in the French outbreak – has withdrawn from sale five varieties of sprouting seeds and sprouting seed mixes, even though the company contends that “…there has been no established link…” between the seeds they supplied and the outbreak cases.

If ECDC and EFSA were uncertain of the validity of their conclusion, they should not have named the company to begin with.

If the agencies have developed new information that invalidates their initial conclusion and clears AGA SAAT, they should say so.

If ECDC and EFSA simply yielded to pressure and altered their initial report for no valid scientific reason, they should be ashamed of themselves.

The primary role of public health and safety agencies is to protect the health and safety of their citizens – not the political safety of the agencies.

For shame!