I can’t help feeling there’s still a lack of logical thinking in the fall-out from the E. coli crisis.

It was good to see the European Commission taking action to address the PR disaster that was the handling of the crisis by taking out full page newspaper advertorials this week. But that’s about where the praise ends.

The commission’s choice of the Metro newspaper for the UK strand of its campaign was a bizarre, city-centric decision that won’t reach readers in many regions where much of the affected produce is grown.

The fact that the EC has also chosen what one assumes is a generic, continent-wide ad featuring growers from Spain and the Netherlands will also not necessarily give UK consumers the reassurance they need about the safety of home-grown produce.

At the very least, the EC should have liaised with key industry bodies in each country and produced a tailored advert that was relevant to readers in individual nations.

And since we’re on the subject of joined-up thinking, what about the FSA’s decision not to relax its advice on sprouting seeds? The Danes have changed their advice this week, while in Germany the farm originally implicated in the crisis has re-opened. All the while UK sprouting seed growers are edging closer to the precipice.

Everyone understands the importance of not rushing out with new announcements before the facts are to hand, but when it was doing exactly this that put growers’ livelihoods in jeopardy in the first place, producers really ought to be taken into account now.