German officials admitted it is not the fresh vegetables.
Meanwhile the Dutch and Spanish agriculture industry has been devastated. It is the middle of the fresh salad season.
Losses are estimated to be 50 million Euro per week (for just the cucumber farmers in The Netherlands).

Ground zero is Hamburg. There is something wrong there, not in some foreign vegetables. But it's always easier to point to outside reasons, then own wrongdoing. Something is stinking, literally, in Northern Germany.

The problem almost certainly (or did) come from a food-processing/packing plant serving the German market. There have been almost no cases reported outside Germany - and most if not all the handful of people afflicted in the UK had just returned from there.

Spanish fruit and veg go everywhere across Europe- so if it was down to the Spanish farmers the disease would be more widespread.

Nasty beggar though, especially in children where breakdown of the red blood cells (haemolysis) is a more common complication. All that junk in the bloodstream destroys the kidneys and then it's 'good night nurse'. Add to that antibiotic resistance and the apparently highly contagious nature of the bug....

This is one kind of Hitler's revenge you really don't want.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/02/e-coli-strain-previously-unseen

It seems a nasty piece of work, (relatively) high death rate, and "likely" antibiotic resistant.

Here in Stockholm we get almost all our salad produce from Holland, but I'm washing all my fresh produce with extra care just to be on the safe side.

Posted By: GrowlerI get all my salad produce from my garden.......no outbreaks of renal failure here as far as I can tell...

Nice, unfortunately I live in a second floor apartment, so a couple of tomato plants on the balcony is all I can manage!!!

(What do you do in the winter though?)

Winter diet tends to be more soup based, since we also grow loads of root veg such as carrot, parsnip, potato, onion etc, alongside cabbages, sprouts etc. Beans, chillies and courgettes (zucchini) all freeze well, as does some fruit. Other fruits get preserved - plums, cherries, apples. We also have a small flock of chickens, so no shortage of eggs, and any male chicks that arrive are given six months 'preparation'.....

....I wanted to get two Mangalitzas this year, but SWMBO put her foot down.

In all seriousness, If I could find/barter a local source of oil/fat and flour of some description, I could be tempted to try a year of complete self-sufficiency. (We also have a working well on the property). Don't know how I'd get on without yeast and/or baking soda for bread though.

Had a sausage and marmalade sandwich for breakfast.

Posted By: alsetalokinPut on a long-sleeved shirt?

:-p

Posted By: LoonymanI would love to have enough land to provide for the family... It sounds idyllic !!!!!

The thought of being able to live a self-sufficient life seems to be a dream for a lot of people. Not for me though - I originally came from a rural part of this country. A self-sufficient life sounds to me like a never-ending nightmare of repetitive toil, effort, dirty smelly manual labour, and tedious chores in return for which you barely manage to get by. Of course I also fully realise that it is a case of "horses for courses", and that a lot of people who are successfully managing to happily live such lives might use a similar description when talking about my life, or about the life of a salaried employee, which they might consider to be some form of indentured slavery.

Since the 1970s, a lot of urban folks have been trying to set up self-sufficient lives for themselves in the part of this country where I come from. In my experience, the vast majority of them tend to underestimate the sheer amount of work involved, and the marginal nature of such an existence, and so they fail. Sometimes "getting back to nature" means being both literally and metaphorically knee deep in the shit! I would estimate that fewer than 10% have succeeded. But then again, that is probably the same success rate for any small business startup.

Some people just want to "escape to the country." I just wanted to escape from it.

@Loony

Seen 'Good Neighbors', I take it?

Felicity Kendall was sooo cute back then, still is a nice looking woman.

Sweetly pretty.. ;-)

Posted By: VylasniBBQ season inauguration tonight. Nice steaks, Montreal Steak Spice, Garlic Powder, some BBQ sauce (garlic flavored), grilled to perfection with a side of Zucchinis in Bruschetta spices perfectly steamed, yummy! :)

Mmmm sounds good. My recent favourite vegetable has been asparagus covered in oil and lemon/lime juice + fresh cracked pepper.

I like food so much I eat it multiple times a day