There was much talk at Fruit Logistica last week about the handling of last year’s E. coli crisis, and in particular the way it was botched from a PR perspective.

Andalusian agriculture minister Clara Aguilera was unequivocal in her demands for harmonised procedures to be brought in across Europe to prevent a repeat of the PR catastrophe that cost producers hundreds of millions of pounds in lost sales.

She argued that a system needed to be in place to ensure that nations did not act unilaterally in pointing the finger at other countries’ produce without definitive proof.

All of that seems to make perfect sense. It was interesting to compare what happened in Germany to the way a similar case was handled here in the UK, where authorities, working with the trade, took their time before finally making a considered statement to the media in September last year. As a result there was minimal hysteria in the papers.

It’s been almost a year since news of the E. coli case first broke, but the fact that many visitors to Berlin reported sales only just returning to normal reflects just how deeply the crisis affected suppliers.

That makes it all the more vital that authorities across the continent recognise there must be no repeat of how the situation was handled.