Because of lobbying

EHEC - Are they really on the right track?

 

Maria Weiß  June 7, 2011   

It is a striking fact, that all of  the products for which there was an official warning because of EHEC are related to the use of fertiliser. Have there been investigations about extensively used fertilisers in the mean time? Up to now nothing is known about that.

 

Today it was in the news that the fatal intestinal pathogen EHEC is suspected to get into the food chain by biogas plants, and it is for this reason: In these plants waste materials, faeces, and all kinds of biomass  are mixed up and converted into gas. And in this process of mixing various components absolutely new combinations emerge. That sounds plausible. The crucial question then would be: how this stuff comes in the food chain? And this question must be answered. If for example I hear Mrs. Aigner warning that please nobody should eat tomatoes, nor cucumbers, and, above all, no lettuce although there is no prove at all that this “mysterious” disease agent has anything to do with the consumption of cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce, it is anyway conspicuous that she insists so much just in these three important sorts of food as an alleged danger. It is known that especially lettuce is fertilised. And who says that in these biogas plants, where certainly  a lot of waste can be found because the material certainly cannot  be transformed into gas one-to-one, this leftover stuff is not re-sold to farmers as fertiliser. That would be really  a serious criminal act if that should have been done.

 

Why there were still no investigations of all of the operators of biogas plants who are also selling fertilisers, why no thorough check up for the existence of this agent being said to have already cost more than 20 lives?

 

Instead, the existence of umpteen of agricultural enterprises is questioned by one-sided and totally unsecured public speculation in an unscrupulous manner which, apart from the vulgarity of the Merkel government passing the buck to Spain, (perhaps because of its inner turmoil by which it currently became "unpopular"?), an act that had to be withdrawn officially by now and that will cost the taxpayers many millions of Euros  for completely legitimate claims for compensation.  Here the anger is really appropriate, and not only that.

 

According to reports from the Internet the operators of biogas plants (meanwhile having increased to the number of more than 6500 in the country) have said that they would abide by the food purity law. So what? Is that the sole reason not to carry out any checks? Because of lobbying! In one case, a single notice is solely sufficient to discredit an entire restaurant (Lübeck), but in this case the government once again is grovelling before a particular lobby, from what ever reason.

 

It is remarkable that the Russian government fairly soon after the appearing of the EHEC pathogen has stopped all shipments of fresh vegetable from Europe although the Spanish cucumber theory had just vanished into thin air, as the only country in the world. Should they have knowledge there about these practices and the resulting risks? This would not be surprising.

 

(Translation of the German original)

 

 

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