E. coli remains a mystery as sprout tests are negative

What seems increasingly likely is that Germany and Germany alone was responsible for the E. coli outbreak. While there have been victims outside of Germany, they were people who had been in northern Germany. Over the weekend German authorities were convinced that the problem was with bean sprouts grown at a German organic farm but tests have come back negative.

The Guardian:

A first set of 23 results from 40 samples taken at the farm were negative, Lower Saxony's agriculture ministry said in a statement.

"The search for the outbreak's cause is very difficult, as several weeks have passed since its suspected start," it said. "A conclusion of the investigations and a clarification of the contamination's origin is not expected in the short term."

This is the worst possible news for both German consumers, who face indefinite warnings against raw salad leaves, tomatoes and cucumbers, and, more acutely, farmers. Spain's farmers, whose cucumbers were wrongly at first blamed by German scientists, have suffered in particular. The news also came too late to prevent the small town of Bienenbüttel, 40 miles south of Hamburg in Lower Saxony's rural heartland, being overrun by media while police sealed off access to the farm. Its owner, Klaus Verbeck, told a local newspaper he was baffled at the apparent connection, given there were no animals or animal products on the site.

The German handling of this is so bad that American experts have called them incompetent.