EU E. Coli scare anyone?

absolutely no worries here
 
"The BBC's Mark Lobel in Strasbourg says the aid package for farmers is expected to be more than 100m euros ($146m); it will be fully drawn from existing EU funds and possibly issued within weeks."

Oh I see Germany f**k up and we have to contribute to pay the Spanish - great, what I pay my tax for. Lets see, can they not incorrectly blame us for something so we can have some money please?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13677348

God I hate these F**k ups. Germany do not usually get themselves into a mess like this, that is usually our privilage.

Oh did someone pay us squillions for CJD outbreak?
 
As I already said: That f*ck up is thanks to federalism:

Source of Outbreak Still a Mystery

Hospitals Struggling as Criticism of Crisis Management Mounts

The number of E. coli-related deaths has risen to 22 in Germany as hospitals continue struggling to treat thousands suffering from the bacterial infection. The national hospital association has called for extra funding to fight the epidemic. Meanwhile the government's crisis management is under fire.

Was it sprouts? Or was it cucumbers, tomatoes or lettuce? The search for the cause of the deadliest E. coli outbreak on record continues in Germany. As of Monday evening, the death toll had climbed to 22 and the number of infections likely surpassed 2,200, the country's disease control authority, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). A number of other infections were also reported across Europe, and even as far afield as the US -- with most of those believed to have visited the outbreak epicentre of Hamburg before falling ill.

Hospitals in the northern city-state and in neighboing regions report working at their limits to treat the growing number of patients suffering from a rare strain of the bacteria Enterohemmorhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC), never before seen by scientists in an outbreak. The aggressive mutant strain of two separate E. coli bacteria has caused severe complications in more than one-third of patients, who have developed hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS), which can lead to kidney failure. Doctors are scrambling to provide kidney dialysis for these patients, reportedly rushing them between cities in ambulances because only a limited number of machines are available. Meanwhile hospital workers are said to be giving up weekends and vacation to meet growing demand. Fears of blood bank shortages have also sparked calls for citizens to donate their blood.

On Tuesday, the German hospitals association (DKG) said its members were overwhelmed with the financial strain of the outbreak, and demanded government aid. "In light of the E. coli epidemic I appeal to politicians to take back the financial cuts planned for hospitals," DKG managing director Georg Baum told daily Rheinische Post. The situation proves just how important keeping beds and personnel available at clinics can be, he said, explaining that healthcare institutions in affected areas had only managed to stay afloat because they were swapping staff. "The clinics are doing everything necessary for the care of the sick -- without considering whether their services will be compensated by health insurers later," Baum told the paper.

Bureaucratic Tangles

Meanwhile the country's new Health Minister Daniel Bahr, in office for only about one month, is drawing criticism for his handling of the epidemic from opposition politicians. Over the weekend the 34-year-old member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's junior coalition party, the Free Democrats, visited the front line of the outbreak, the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE). While the visit yielded striking photographs, his appearance at a later press conference disappointed politicians. In response to the ongoing questions over the source of the outbreak, Bahr said raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce were still the main suspects. But news that the Lower Saxony Agriculture Ministry was in hot pursuit of newly suspected sprouts had already broken earlier.

"I'm asking myself what exactly the health minister is doing," said Renate K?nast, co-leader of the Green party's parliamentary group on Monday. Thomas Oppermann, speaker for the center-left Social Democratic (SPD) parliamentary group said he found Bahr's crisis management "unconvincing." Another SPD politician, parliamentary health policy committee member Karl Lauterbach, said the Health Ministry had failed in its communication strategy. "The coordination of testing and the clarifications for the public were suboptimal," he told daily Passauer Neue Presse on Tuesday. Lauterbach also called on Bahr to create a mobile task force to tackle future outbreaks.

Experts have also criticized the country's muddled bureaucratic process for wasting precious time in pinpointing the outbreak's origin. Responsibilities are spread across local, municipal, state and federal agencies, with no central information center to inform the public, they complain.

But Consumer and Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner, a member of Merkel's conservatives, defended the response of government agencies. "The crisis management works -- the agencies are concentrating all of their efforts on fighting this epidemic," she told daily Saarbr?cker Zeitung on Tuesday. An emergency meeting for state and federal health and consumer ministers has been planned for Wednesday.

EU Agriculture Ministers Meet

Authorities are still advising consumers to avoid raw tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and most recently sprouts, despite their failure to determine a direct link between the produce and E. coli. Though Lower Saxony's first round of testing on suspected sprouts turned up negative for the bacteria, authorities in Hanover said they were still pursuing the lead. "We stand by our suspicions," state Agriculture Ministry spokesman Gert Hahne said.

Fears over eating raw vegetables have devastated the agriculture industry, with thousands of farmers and related businesses complaining of dramatic losses totalling some ?5 million per day. Diplomatic tensions between Spain and Germany also arose after officials initially blamed Spanish cucumbers for the outbreak. Many farmers had to destroy their crops after consumer confidence in their produce collapsed. The country has since demanded compensation for its farmers' losses.

European Union agriculture ministers are set to discuss potential aid for farmers at a crisis summit in Luxembourg on Tuesday. "This industry now needs our support," Aigner said.

-- kla, with wires

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,767087,00.html
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If you avoid all food you'll be fine. ...

That bloke is so bad a Minister he should be Ukanian; we have some clots but usually our civil service stop them shooting their incompetent mouth's off.
 
Cobol74 said:
Oh did someone pay us squillions for CJD outbreak?
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Paying for Germany's half-cocked accusation would piss me off too, but Britain has only itself (and its elected government) to blame for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and the subsequent variant CJD cases. Even before the first human cases, Australian newspapers (that is how available the information was) were reporting in 1994 the cross-species transmission of the BSE prion to mice. The UK governments response to BSE was expedient to say the least. "Let's protect the farmers and our industry first" was their approach. This approach was lackluster, obviously inadequate and seemed to place the population at great risk. And it was justified by favouring legal rigor (innocent until proven guilty beyond all doubt) over pathological and scientific evidence.

I moved to England in 1995 (to do my BTE POP ... Been to England, Practiced on Poms). It was no surprise to me to see one of the first cases of variant CJD later that year (a young woman, solicitor from Canterbury, aged 28). She didn't make it into the media, because her family didn't have some ridiculous story about how she liked hamburgers (which seemed to accompany the publicised cases). BSE started in Kent (Ashford) 10 years earlier. Prion disease has been known of for decades. Every medical student would learn about it. Every medical student knew it had a 10 to 20 year incubation period. Every medical student knew of Kuru (the prion disease seen in New Guinea that results from eating the brains of dead tribal elders) and the fact that it was transmitted from eating infected animal remains. But the British government decided to listen to lawyers and farmers, rather than people who knew something about these things. They only started to do the right thing, after people had died. It was, by far, the worst example of public health incompetence in the history of mankind. And this from the country that produced John Snow (not the cricketer). There were some funny parts though. I almost burst my sides when the CEO of Walker's Crisps called a press conference to assure everyone that Walker's Beef Flavoured Crisps contained absolutely no beef; and MacDonalds repeated informed the public that all their beef came from Holland.

No, you have the right to be upset with the Germans, but you have no one but yourselves to blame for BSE.
 
No, I want them (EU) to pay us for the loss, like we are contributing to the payments to the Spanish.

I agree with your post, apart from the French hiding their carcases in big pits dug by JCBs so they were even more culpable, we were impossibly incompetent on CJD.

Ukanian Politicians (in general) = wankers. Now they are just Posh Wankers.
 
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If I may ask one favour, it is this: please accept this German's apologies for the idiocy of his government. I didn't vote for either of those parties and I can't wait to vote for their opponents again, but this "Blame Spain! Oh no, blame sprouts! Oh no, wait..." farce is completely and utterly shameful. It is however representative of the general state of our governing coalition.
 
I'm pretty sure the EU compensated British farmers for the BSE disaster, as the EU regularily does compensate farmers all over the EU for draughts, too wet years, everything except perfect weather. If there's one thing that works for the benefit of all (or none) of the EU countries equally it's financial aid for the farmers. As farmers are pretty much struggling all over the EU due to the low food prices, I am not even sure if this pampering and money-showering is a bad thing. While only the rich would profit from lower taxes, everyone would be affected by higher food prices.

EDIT: I'm happy to repeat it: "Blame the foreigners" (in this case: the Spanish) is exactly what i'd have expected from our government. In fact, from any conservative government worldwide.
 
I am sure that they did not offer compensation for the foot and mouth(s) either.

Mercle: Blame the foreigners - damn we can not get the Brits this time. ...
 
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I've been thinking, as long as we only eat deep-fried food we will all be fine......dead from a heartattack in a month but atleast not sick.
 
Cobol74 said:
I am sure that they did not offer compensation for the foot and mouth(s) either.

Mercle: Blame the foreigners - damn we can not get the Brits this time. ...
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Maybe the EU compensations are only for farmers, not for ranchers, or it's because the British EU half-membership means they only have to pay but won't get any benefits...

I'll repeat it for a fourth time, and not at all cause I am a card-carrying Labour member: Blaming foreigners is what you get for voting conservatice :p
 
So it's sprouts today? Make up your mind already. :p
 
Yup. Funnily, some are justifying the ban on tomatoes and cucumbers with "Well, if you stopped eating salad, you also would have stopped eating sprout"... :facepalm:
 
^ Sorry. But are you suggesting that people actually eat those alfalfa sprouts? They are surely just for decoration ... aren't they?
 
GerFix said:
^ Sorry. But are you suggesting that people actually eat those alfalfa sprouts? They are surely just for decoration ... aren't they?
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something poisenous doesn't care if it's used as decoration or as nutritiun, you'll be dead anyhow!
 
I have much more pressing issues and worse threats. I have man flu.
 
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