Tons of Fresh Produce Trashed In Germany / UpDate-
 

By Frederik Pleitgen, CNN
June 8, 2011 9:15 a.m EDT

http://www.origino.ca/images/tomato-vines.jpg

Werder, Germany (CNN) -- Fruit and vegetable company Werder Frucht has to bring in additional workers these days or risk falling behind. But the workers are not busy selling the company's tomatoes: they are busy throwing red, ripe produce in the trash.
Workers empty crate after crate of vine-ripened vegetables into a giant garbage container on the company's premises in Werder near Berlin.
For the past four weeks -- since an E. coli scare caused European consumers to all but abandon eating raw vegetables -- demand in tomatoes has plummeted, says Petra Lack, Werder Frucht sales manager.
"At the beginning the demand dropped to about 10% of what we would normally sell, then it went to about 5%," Lack says. "Now the demand has stabilized at about 25% of the normal amount of tomatoes we would be selling."
Lack says a health warning from the German government urging people not to eat raw lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers has caused consumers to shy away from almost all vegetables.
"Things are awful at the moment," Lack says standing next to the giant garbage container full of tomatoes. "We hope this won't continue for the whole harvest season. But if the government keeps telling people not to eat lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers nothing will change."
This week Werder Frucht will destroy about 270 tons of tomatoes. The cost of the purge will be measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars, company officials say. The company is keeping track of all the tomatoes it must destroy with plans to file damage claims against the European Union to recoup some of the losses.
"It is a real shame," says Lack, "but we simply cannot sell these tomatoes. The consumers just aren't buying."
Werder Frucht criticizes the government for its handling of the outbreak of a deadly strain of E. coli in northern Germany. The outbreak has killed nearly two dozen people and will leave many others with lifelong impairments like kidney failure.
German authorities first issued a blanket warning for consumers to avoid eating raw lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers. Then authorities in Hamburg implied that Spanish cucumbers might be the origin of the E. coli stain, a claim later disproved. Now health officials are investigating a company in northern Germany that sells various types of sprouts, but so far lab samples have shown no traces of bacterial infection.
The number of new cases of infection has been falling significantly, German Health Minister Daniel Bahr said Wednesday.
Spain has threatened to sue Germany for compensation as its farmers say their losses are rising to hundreds of millions of euros. The German agricultural association says so far farmers in Germany have lost about €50 million euros ($73.4 million) in revenue since the outbreak.
On Tuesday the EU said it would pay €150 million ($220 million) to farmers in Europe and that amount is expected to rise in the coming days as some countries have hinted more is needed to cover the damages to their farming sectors.
But farming is also about pride and Andre Becker, who heads the tomato production in a greenhouse complex on the outskirts of Berlin, says he would rather see his produce on dinner tables than be compensated for tossing vegetables in the trash.
"We produce according to strict standards," Becker says as he is cutting ripe tomatoes off a vine. "We constantly monitor the water and the nutrients we give the plants and we have tested for E. coli -- all tests have been negative."
With a lot of sunny days, 2011 was promising to be a good year for tomatoes. The vegetables grow quickly and are firm, juicy and of a healthy red color. Becker says that makes it even more painful to throw so much of the crop away.
"Right now we have so much to do just harvesting to the tomatoes that we don't really talk much about the situation," he says. "But it really is a shame."
The workers at the greenhouse have to keep harvesting the tomatoes or risk destroying the plants. Normally the produce would wind up in grocery stores within a day. Now the vast majority wind up in an air conditioned warehouse and then in a garbage container.

re: Tons of Fresh Produce Trashed In Germany / UpDate-
 

and we are always told all food production is safe when you get a food scare sutch as what is happeneing just now it will never be as bad as told on the news the best thing anyone can do is grow your own no chemicals , safe and taste better

re: Tons of Fresh Produce Trashed In Germany / UpDate-
 

E. Coli Death Toll Rises to 31; Sprouts Traced to Trash in Home

By the CNN Wire Staff
June 10, 2011 12:39 pm EST

Berlin (CNN) -- Four more deaths have been confirmed by German health officials Friday bringing the total number of European deaths from an E. coli outbreak to 31. All but one were in Germany.
According to German health authorities the bacteria has been traced to sprouts found in a North Rhine-Westphalia household in western Germany. This is the first time the actual bacteria has been found in produce.
The number of people infected with E. coli now stands at 2,988, of whom 759 have the severe form of the intestinal illness. Though the rate of infection is slowing, officials at the Robert Koch Institute said the number of infections will continue to rise.
A spokesman for the German ministry of consumer affairs said sprouts were tested in the home when two members of the family became infected after eating the sprouts.
The vegetables in question seem to originate from a farm in Northern Germany that has already been linked to the outbreak, ministry spokesman Stephan Melessa.
Investigators determined bean sprouts were the cause of the outbreak after 17 people became ill after eating at the same restaurant, Reinhard Burger, president of the Robert Koch Institute, told reporters.
Authorities questioned people about what they ate and asked the cooks where the ingredients came from, Burger said.
The common denominator, he said, was only those who ate food containing the sprouts became ill.
Farmers in Spain, France, Holland and Belgium have been seeking compensation for their losses. The European Commission has proposed that the European Union pay about $300 million, but Spain alone claims about $600 million in losses.
In Spain, the fresh produce exporter Frunet filed what is believed to be the first lawsuit by a Spanish company against the Hamburg state government over its earlier allegations that Spanish products were to blame for the E.coli outbreak.
The complaint, filed Thursday in Hamburg, demands the immediate release of all laboratory tests and other documentation that Hamburg officials used when they blamed -- wrongly it turns out -- Frunet's organic cucumbers as a source of the outbreak, Frunet's owner, Antonio Lavao, told CNN by phone on Friday.
Frunet, based in Spain's southern Malaga province, expects to file another lawsuit against the Hamburg state government seeking 1 million euros ($144 million) in losses from fresh produce it had to destroy, Lavao said.
"My company was named specifically" by German authorities, Lavao said.
His exports remain blocked because even as German and European Commission officials have cleared Spanish cucumbers generally of any link to the outbreak, there remains suspicion among his clients since his firm was identified, wrongly, as a source of the bacteria, he said.
"We don't want to be collateral damage. We want a specific rectification," Lavao said.
The lawsuit is the first of its kind by a Spanish company against German authorities, said Jose Maria Pozancos, managing director of Spain's fresh produce export federation Fepex.
Frunet grows relatively few cucumbers; its speciality is premium tomatoes for export.
Lavao said he was not confident that his firm would receive any public compensation, which is why it filed the lawsuit against German authorities.

Re: Tons of Fresh Produce Trashed In Germany / UpDate-
 

In this country where I live now, the Dominicans think we are NUTS eating veg with chemicals and eating out of tins!

The cancer rate here is almost non existable,,,,go figure why

Re: Tons of Fresh Produce Trashed In Germany / UpDate-
 

They are throwing vast amounts of pefectly safe, good food away here as no wants to buy it. Germany has a lot of compensation to pay out for trying to shift the blame onto others.