head of a German farm facing an inquiry over a deadly E.coli outbreak has denied that bean sprouts grown at his farm could be to blame.

Klaus Verbeck, managing director of the "Gaertnerhof Bienenbuettel", told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung that no fertilisers are used to produce his bean sprouts and that there are no animals on his organic farm.
German officials said on Sunday his bean sprouts could be behind an E.coli outbreak that has killed 22 and made more than 2,200 people ill across Europe. The farm has been shut, produce recalled and further test results are due on Monday.
"I can't understand how the processes we have here and the accusations could possibly fit together," Mr Verbeck told the paper. "The salad sprouts are grown only from seeds and water, and they aren't fertilised at all. There aren't any animal fertilisers used in other areas on the farm either."
Neither Mr Verbeck, himself a vegetarian, nor anyone else from the farm would talk on Monday to journalists and television crews, including Reuters, outside his farm in the rural town of 6,600 that is located about 70km (40 miles) south of Hamburg.
German officials, under intense pressure to identify the source of the E.coli outbreak, have warned consumers for weeks to avoid tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce, and at one stage said Spanish cucumbers might be the source of the outbreak. The rare E.coli strain has killed 21 Germans and one Swede.

 

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