Russia has banned the import of all fresh vegetables from the European Union because of the E. coli outbreak centred on Germany.
The country's chief medical officer said EU-produced vegetables would be seized across Russia.
More than 1,500 people have been infected by enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), which can cause the deadly haemolytic-uraemic syndrome (HUS).
Seventeen people have died - 16 of them in Germany and one in Sweden.
Earlier suggestions that infected Spanish cucumbers were the source of the outbreak have now been discounted, with German health officials admitting they do not know where this particularly virulent strain of of E.coli has come from.
BBC Moscow correspondent Daniel Sandford says more than a quarter of all the vegetables exported from the European Union go to Russia, making it the single biggest export market for EU farmers.
Russia banned vegetable imports from Germany and Spain earlier this week.
Consumer protection agency head Gennady Onishchenko announced the the extension of the ban to cover fresh vegetables from anywhere in the European Union.
He said orders to stop all incoming European vegetable shipments had been issued to Russian customs authorities, adding: "I call on people to forgo imported vegetables in favour of domestic products."
He criticised food safety standards in the EU.
"This shows that Europe's lauded health legislation - one which Russia is being urged to adopt - does not work," he said.
The head of the German public health body tackling the E. coli outbreak says it may be months before it stops, depending on whether infected food is still in warehouses and whether the original source is still active.
Reinhard Burger, president of the Robert Koch Institute, told the BBC "we may never know" the infections' source.
Sources: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and the Robert Koch Institute
At least 365 new E. coli cases were reported on Wednesday, a quarter of them involving HUS, a condition associated with bloody diarrhoea and kidney failure, the Robert Koch Institute said.
The new cases include two in the US, both of whom had recently travelled to Hamburg, where many of the cases are clustered.
Spain has threatened to take legal action on behalf of its farmers against German authorities who had alleged a link between Spanish vegetables and the deadly strain of bacteria.
The loss of earnings for affected farmers in Spain has been estimated at more than 200 million euros ($290 million) per week.
The
No comments:
Post a Comment