Germany Struggles to Strengthen Food Safety after Deadly E. coli Crisis

“The O104:H4 type presented a special challenge to us owing to the atypical nature of the strain and the patient spectrum that included predominantly younger people,” said Professor Andreas Hensel, PhD, president of the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment. “Since in these cases usually only three out of four pathogens can be identified at all, we were lucky to be able to have dealt with the threat as fast as we did.”

The European Union, meanwhile, has banned imports of seeds and seedlings from Egypt until the end of this year. According to Dr. Hensel, it is only a matter of time until an outbreak with similar consequences occurs. In view of increasing globalization and changing production conditions in the agriculture and food industry, standards for product identification and traceability will have to play a more prominent role, not only at a national but also at a European level, he said.

“There is a German saying: ‘Why bother when a sack of rice had fallen over in China?’” Dr. Hensel said. “Now we have come to a point where we literally need to ask ourselves where these sacks are coming from and what is inside.”

Dr. Hensel added that the exchange of information among all members involved in the food production chain and safety control will also have to effect improvements through electronic notification systems and the introduction of centralized databases, a claim widely supported by health professionals, epidemiologists, and supranational institutions like the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

“The chain from local GPs to the European level can be very long,’’ said ECDC Director Marc Sprenger, MD, PhD. “Notification systems across the EU need to be speeded up. The technology is available and not particularly expensive.”

Food and animal feed control regulations in Germany are overseen by more than 400 agencies at state and district level. Cross-state standards regarding quality management and education of personnel involved hardly exist. In emergency cases like a nationwide foodborne outbreak, this system can hinder not only the reporting of lifesaving information but also the identification of the contamination source itself.

“What we need is a central authority similar to a national investigative police agency that is capable to observe and act across state borders,“ said Hans-Michael Goldmann, head of the German parliamentary Committee on Food, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection. Goldmann had called for stronger food safety legislation during the E. coli crisis.

Reacting to the debate, the German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection recently commissioned a report from the Federal Audit Office to look into the existing regulations. Its recommendations, made public in November, include the introduction of a federal task force and the formation of special units consisting of experts with the mandate to operate nationwide, supporting the states in the implementation of effective food safety controls.

Although ministry officials said that the office’s recommendations will be discussed with ministers of all 16 German states at the next customer protection ministers’ meeting in Hamburg by the end of this year, prospects for regulatory change look poor. Some states have declared they will not agree to the plans unconditionally. In a recent statement, Gert Lindemann, minister of customer protection for Lower Saxony, the state where the farm with the contaminated fenugreek seeds is located, announced his willingness to cooperate with the government yet refused to relinquish authority over food and animal feed controls.