The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has announced the setting up a task force to coordinate investigations to track down the source of any contaminated sprouted seeds in the European Union following an E.coli outbreak in the Bordeaux region of France.
?In response to an urgent request from the European Commission, the EFSA said its scientists were providing immediate scientific assistance and were being joined by experts from the EU member states, in particular from France, Germany, Italy and the UK.
The task force will also include scientists from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The EFSA said in a statement that the project would seek to understand how the production and distribution chain of seeds, bean sprouts and other sprouted seeds is organised throughout the EU.
To do this, the task force will coordinate the gathering and analysis of information regarding the outbreak which will be channelled through the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF).
Investigations by French authorities into the Bordeaux E.coli outbreak are still ongoing and a possible link between the consumption of sprouts and the health effects observed has yet to be definitively established.
If confirmed, seeds could be seen as a common factor between the French outbreak and an outbreak in May in Germany associated with bean sprouts.
French authorities have reported patients suffering from bloody diarrhoea in the Bordeaux region of the country, several of whom have been diagnosed with haemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), which can be caused by Shiga toxin-producing E.coli.
Preliminary bacteriological tests found the E. coli strain O104:H4 to be present in two of the cases. French officials said this was the same strain as that responsible for the outbreak in Germany.
They said an epidemiological investigation found that a number of patients, who live in close proximity to each other, had attended an open day at a recreational centre in the commune of Bègles near Bordeaux on 8 June and many of these were said to have eaten beansprouts scattered on various dishes at the centre.
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