Public health experts in the U.S. and elsewhere seem none too surprised that the Germans now say sprouts were definitely the vegetable that spread the virulent E. coli bacteria that has killed at least 35 people and sickened more than 3,000 in Europe.
The experts say that raw sprouts, and how they are grown, provide the perfect breeding ground for the growth of food-borne bacteria.
Sprouts are still associated in many people's minds with granola and health food. But they've been linked to dozens of food-borne illness outbreaks in the U.S. in the past 20 years, including eight that affected more than 100 people each, says Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C.
The best way to protect yourself, prominent food safety experts say, is to simply avoid eating raw sprouts.
"I have not eaten sprouts for more than 15 years. I've always said eating sprouts as part of a healthy diet is like saying you smoke to reduce your weight," says Michael Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Well-known Seattle food safety attorney Bill Marler hasn't eaten sprouts in years. "I think they are more dangerous than raw milk because more people have access to them," he says.
"If we're in a restaurant and they've put sprouts on my sandwich, I will send it back," says William Keene, senior epidemiologist at Oregon's Public Health Division in Portland. "I've told family and neighbors for 15 years not to eat sprouts."
Even the Food and Drug Administration advises consumers to be careful. Its guidance says "children, the elderly, pregnant women and persons with weakened immune systems should avoid eating raw sprouts of any kind."
The agency also suggests cooking sprouts thoroughly to reduce the risk of illness and requesting "that raw sprouts not be added to your food. If you purchase a sandwich or salad at a restaurant or delicatessen, check to make sure that raw sprouts have not been added."
How is something so green and seemingly healthful so potentially dangerous?
It's because the seeds used to make sprouts for human consumption are the same seeds sold to farmers to grow crops such as alfalfa, mung beans, radishes and other leafy greens, Smith DeWaal says. "They're grown in fields," just like other crops, she says.
And it's in the field that they can be exposed to all manner of bacteria, Keene says. Birds leave droppings on it, he says, "and maybe the field's irrigated with river water, there's mice and snakes, there's cow manure drifting down in the dust from the ranch up the road."
All of this settles on the plants, and some fraction of the bacterial buffet can end up on the seeds that are harvested.
Seeds for sprouts aren't washed when they're initially harvested, because then they would start to sprout. Instead, they're run though cleaning machines that shake the dirt and sticks off them, but don't necessarily deal with possible microbiological contamination.
Some sprout growers wash their seeds in a very dilute mixture of chlorine before they sprout them but "the contamination can live in a crack in the seed and you might get it, but you might not," Smith DeWaal says.
That's not a problem in seeds that will be grown out for animal feed or even vegetables that will be cooked and eaten by humans. But sprouts are different.
"In the sprouting system they're thrust into what is a perfect incubator for bacteria — they're warm and they're wet and they're growing luxuriously," Smith DeWaal says.
Even if there are only a few cells of pathogenic bacteria on the seeds, during sprouting they can grow and increase many thousands of times, Keene says.
Sprouts are a higher risk food than some because they're often not cooked, but the nutrition is the greatest with the fresh food, says Bob Sanderson, president of the International Sprout Growers Association. "The answer to the risk is to sterilize the food, but then it's not fresh."
At his company, Jonathan's Sprouts in Rochester, Mass., "we test every batch for E. coli and salmonella before it's shipped," as do many growers in the U.S., who are "very conscious of taking precautions to try to minimize the problem" of contamination.
source: yourlife.usatoday
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