It was the news that started a devastating chain of events for the fresh produce industry. Initial reports in May told that an E. coli outbreak in Germany had killed two people and left up to 200 ill. The authorities swung into action and started running tests to find the source of the outbreak.
But no one could have predicted what happened next. What followed has been described repeatedly as a “disaster” for the produce industry, as finger pointing saw the crisis spiral out of control as the death count rose by the day.
The initial verdict was swift. Within days, European health officials at the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) had linked cucumbers from Spain to the outbreak and two Andalusian companies were implicated and eventually named. The suspicion was picked up by Hamburg health minister Cornelia Pruefer-Storcks, who said publicly that the finger of blame “now points to cucumbers”.
A frenzy erupted and less than a week later, German officials conceded that Spanish exports were not at the root of the problem after all.
The hunt shifted again when Germany’s national centre for disease control found new evidence and president Reinhard Burger told reporters: “It’s the bean sprouts.”
Then it wasn’t the bean sprouts. Then it was sprouting seeds, though there appeared to be a question mark over exactly what fit into this category.
The number of fatalities continued to rise daily and a second outbreak of the same strain of E. coli hit south-west France at the end of last month. French officials linked the incident to UK company Thompson & Morgan, which strenuously denied involvement.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) then announced that it had set up a task force to co-ordinate investigations to track down the source of any contaminated sprouted seeds in the EU.
The latest line to be implicated is Egyptian fenugreek seeds, with EFSA and the ECDC releasing a joint statement to let the public know that “the tracing back is progressing and has thus far shown that fenugreek seeds imported from Egypt either in 2009 and/or 2010 are implicated in both outbreaks”.
Along the way, several key markets including Russia reacted by banning or limiting imports from Europe.
It’s a complex case. At every turn, a number of produce companies have been named and implicated. It has been almost impossible for the industry to keep up with the timeline, let alone consumers.
The series of events takes in everyone from government officials right through to retailers, suppliers and growers and is made more complicated by the fact that it is a developing story, still changing on a day-to-day basis.
The latest estimate from the Fresh Produce Consortium (FPC) claims that so far, £54 million has been wiped from the UK produce industry from lost cucumber, tomato and lettuce sales alone.
Spain has been the worst hit, with figures from European trade body Freshfel maintaining that the major producing country haemorrhaged around €200 million a week at the height of the crisis. The Netherlands lost €80m a week, Germany and France lost €30m a week, Belgium lost €4m a week and Portugal lost €3m a week.
At the same time, sales of cucumbers in some member states fell by 80-100 per cent, tomatoes by 50-80 per cent and lettuce by more than half.
This has become a food scare on an unprecedented scale, having so far claimed 48 lives and infected nearly 4,200 people in France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
A EC-approved aid package of €210m has been agreed as compensation, but this has been slammed as “far too little, far too late” by FPC chief executive Nigel Jenney in a statement that was echoed by European counterparts. Alongside this, a €15m pot has been earmarked for the industry to match-fund to promote fruit and vegetables.
Many have criticised the way the incident has been handled and fear the consequences that the finger pointing will have not only on the businesses named but on the produce industry as a whole.
A step back
It has been difficult to get a grip on the situation from the start. This food crisis was made more challenging than most by the fast-growing number of deaths, the confusion and anger caused by false allegations and the international nature of the produce industry. Even at government level, the response to the outbreak was split across departments including the health, agricultural and trade ministries.
Jenney has hit out at “unfounded and premature” claims that have resulted in the huge financial blow and is calling for the UK government to recognise the impact across the supply chain.
The question that many are asking is, how could this outbreak have been managed better?
Gordon Beattie, chairman of crisis PR specialist Beattie Communications, insists that the key to managing a high-profile incident is to ban speculation and take control of the public message. His motto is “if in doubt, say nowt”, especially if the situation is ongoing.
He counts Marks & Spencer, Edam, Disney and GlaxoSmithKline among his clients and has worked on an E. coli outbreak in Scotland that killed 21 people and made many more seriously ill following contamination at a butcher.
“The mistakes that were made in the most recent E. coli outbreak were the same mistakes that were made in Lanarkshire 10 years ago and in many other food scares,” says Beattie. “People started speaking out, saying what the cause might be without knowing what actually caused it. Everyone was getting into a panic and there was all sorts of misinformation.
“We stepped in and everything we put out was official; if it couldn’t be proved, it didn’t go out.
“It takes time to identify the cause of an E. coli outbreak and this means there can be an information gap, while the press repeatedly asks what the cause is. Public health officials feel pressured to make statements that they can’t back up with science. The message to the food industry is don’t say anything until you know the facts. It’s not a sin to say you don’t know yet.”
The most recent crisis lacked a clear stream of communication and many insist that a strong action plan and a co-ordinated approach could have spared the reputation - and in some cases, the livelihoods - of those implicated in the outbreak.
“There were so many parties involved and so many had the opportunity to speak out and unfortunately, they did,” says Beattie. “It is obviously more difficult when events cross borders, but there is a need for a single spokesorganisation for incidents like this. We live in an era when a story breaks and everyone is in there commenting. You need to control the flow of information and now, the authorities must speak to each other and make sure that if this ever happens again, they will not point the finger without being certain of the science. The last thing you want to do is cause panic.
“What we do in a very difficult crisis situation is post a statement on a website and distribute it to the national media,” he explains. “We will only respond in writing to journalists and in some circumstances, we will put out a video broadcast where we control what goes into the public domain so that what is out there is the official news, not news with a spin on it.”
To make sure that this doesn’t happen again, the produce sector needs to equip itself so that it can act quickly in the event of a future outbreak to minimise the impact on the wider sector.
Mary Whenman, managing director of the corporate team at crisis PR specialist Grayling, insists that every food supplier, manufacturer or retailer needs a robust incident management plan in place that is tested “so they know what they would do and who would do it in any food scare scenario”.
But if the worst happens, she recommends some key steps that any company can take to limit damage in the long term. “Do not be too early to cast blame and make assumptions or speculate about the cause of a food scare,” she says. “Conduct a robust and thorough investigation before making any public announcements and build in an interim announcement before the investigation is complete, especially if it is likely to take a significant period of time.
“Try not to get into a public argument about who is to blame,” she adds.“Have discussions away from the public arena as this causes unnecessary anxiety and confusion for consumers who do not know what or who to believe. The E. coli situation was a case in point with the governments of Spain, The Netherlands, Germany and Russia all briefing against one another.”
It is clear that mistakes were made in the handling of the crisis from the very beginning. As the facts surface, the sector will have the opportunity to look back on the development of the case. In fact, a detailed review of the incident will be hosted by Freshfel in the autumn.
Frederic Rosseneu, policy adviser at Freshfel, maintains that the produce industry was initially “kept out” when it should have been involved in tracing the cause of the E. coli outbreak as a “reality check” for authorities who do not have the same level of understanding of the supply chain.
“We should have been involved,” he says. “There was hardly any feedback from the authorities in the early stages and our German members felt that they were relying on the press for information. When people are dying every day, of course there is a lot of pressure but there are still legitimate requests from the industry that need to be dealt with. There should have been at least a dedicated person to assist and answer the questions of the industry on a daily basis.”
He admits that lessons had already been learnt by the time of the second outbreak in France, but he insists that the better collaboration and communication from the outset could have improved the situation substantially.
“Everyone has to admit that it was mainly collateral damage that caused problems, particularly when things were being said about Spain - that’s when it got out of hand,” says Rosseneu. “There should be closer collaboration and not just when there is a crisis. It is still too early to draw the final conclusion, but the industry will have to take a closer look.”
A learning curve
This isn’t the first time that the produce industry has been hit by an E. coli outbreak with far-reaching consequences.
The US spinach sector was knocked by a fatal E. coli outbreak in 2006 that left three dead and 200 ill and a second scare hit tomatoes in 2008, but six weeks later the source was found to be jalapeño peppers.
The first crisis struck a devastating blow to the US fresh produce sector, with spinach sales virtually collapsing overnight after the US Food and Drug Administration warned the public not to eat spinach and the rest of the salad bowl took a blow. The incident cranked up public sensitivity to food scares to unprecedented levels.
Tom Stenzel, president of the United Fresh Produce Association, warns that the European produce industry will have to work hard to restore its reputation and that the sector must “recommit to make sure we are taking all of our responsibilities seriously”.
“The spinach crisis in 2006 was a moment very similar to this E. coli crisis,” he says. “The first thing the government did was say all spinach was suspect and effectively shot down that industry. It had a widespread impact, but the truth was that it came from one company in one afternoon shift.
“Here we are five years later, and we are just about up to the same level of consumption that we had before the crisis. I believe there will be a long-term impact on consumer expectations as a result of how [the German E. coli outbreak] was handled.
“What we have to do as an industry is get back to the individual grower, distributor or packer and the individual lot to find the source of the outbreak.”
US firms took many steps to rebuild consumer confidence in the aftermath of their scares, including the provision of funds for the creation of the Center for Produce Safety as an international food-safety initiative that funds new studies and ongoing training as well as consolidating existing research on food safety. At the same time, the sector committed to change the way it worked with the government because as Stenzel points out, “there is no such thing as zero risk”.
“The importance of bringing industry intelligence into government investigations is one of the lessons we have learnt from all of this,” he says.
But the latest E. coli outbreak is still some way from being resolved. The industry will have to rebuild itself and work to restore its reputation, but the real cause of the problem must be identified before this can really start to happen.
Only by working together and with all those involved will the sector be able to make sure that a food crisis will never play out in this way again.
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