Thu, 02 Jun 2011

E.coli outbreak could be linked to slurry from factory farming

By NNA correspondent Cornelie Unger-Leistner

HAMBURG/DRESDEN/KIEL/HANOVER (NNA) – While German health officials say that they have no idea where the deadly E.coli outbreak, which is mainly centred on Germany but has also affected other parts of Europe, originated, animal welfare and environmental organisations in Germany say that they have warned for a long time that the slurry from factory farms used as fertiliser poses a serious threat to human health and the environment.

More than 1500 people in Europe have been infected by the enterohæmorrhagic E.coli (EHEC) bacterium. This can lead to the fatal hæmolytic-uræmic syndrome (HUS) which has so far caused 16 deaths in Germany and one in Sweden. Contaminated Spanish cucumbers were originally thought to have been the cause but they have now been discounted.

The outbreaks in Germany have occurred mainly in the north of the country, where intensive factory farms are concentrated. There are also many such farms in eastern Germany.

The regional chairman of the German environmental organisation BUND (Friends of the Earth Germany) in Saxony, Hans-Udo Weiland, said on the organisation’s website that their fears had turned into reality. Life-threatening bacteria which had been introduced on to agricultural land through slurry were causing serious, even fatal illnesses in people because they had entered the food chain.

BUND had repeatedly warned with regard to the approval of new factory farms that there were considerable dangers associated with the spread of slurry from intensive animal rearing.

The infection mechanism was known, Weiland emphasised. The EHEC bacterium was excreted in the dung of the industrially farmed animals and spread on the fields in the slurry. The animals themselves do not become sick.

But the pesticides used in agriculture had also killed those organisms in the soil which were able to make the EHEC bacteria harmless. As a result the EHEC pathogens were able to survive despite ground frost and then entered the human food chain through the produce subsequently grown in those fields. It was “hypocritical” to suggest that slurry was not used in growing vegetables, the BUND chairman in Saxony said.

Weiland demanded that slurry from intensive farming should be seen as hazardous waste and treated accordingly. It should “be denied its dishonest status as farm manure with immediate effect, as this provides legitimacy for many unscrupulous farmers to harm nature, contaminate the environment and now also pose a serious threat to human life.”

Industrial factory farms are currently expanding particularly in northern and eastern Germany. Lower Saxony, for example, is the centre of intensive animal husbandry in Germany.

“The new facilities are being approved without reliable evidence having to be provided that there is sufficient area to dispose of the slurry,” BUND writes in one of its publications. Slurry disposal contracts were only demanded for a small number of years. There were no checks as to whether the areas designated for spreading slurry were actually suitable for that purpose.

BUND criticised the fact that since 2007 the approval of intensive factory farms has been considerably simplified through a facilitation law. That had further reduced the hurdles for the establishment of factory farms.

The new rules were attracting international investors to Germany which in turn contributed to excess production, because the supply of pork and poultry meat is fully covered in Europe. The meat was therefore exported but Germany was left with the slurry.

BUND cites the case of a poultry enterprise which intends to build the largest slaughterhouse for poultry meat in Europe in Wietze on the edge of the Lüneburg Heath. It aims to slaughter 450,000 chickens per day. In the southern and eastern parts of Lower Saxony, 400 new fattening farms were planned of 40,000 birds each.

The use of slurry in Germany is regulated by the slurry ordinance which states that it may only be spread on land which is free of snow and frost to prevent the risk of slurry running off into rivers and streams. While the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern extended into March the period over the winter from October to February when there is a ban on the spread of slurry, because the ground was too wet, the relevant ministries in Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony told NNA that they had not done so.

In its FAQs on the EHEC illness, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment refers to the possibility that fruit and vegetables were contaminated by polluted water. The news magazine “Der SPIEGEL” also reports that researchers in Canada had identified a high level of EHEC contamination in wells near intensive factory farming facilities. The question arises to what extent, if at all, the authorities have included water in their investigations, perhaps side-tracked by the initial emphasis on Spanish cucumbers. There is no intensive animal husbandry in the areas where they are grown.

Apart from the current appearance of the dangerous EHEC bacteria with its serious consequences for health, there are other indications that the slurry from intensive factory farming bears little relation any longer to the manure which many people still associate with the traditional dung heap on every farm.

Thus the German Federal Biological Institute in Braunschweig showed in experiments that using slurry as a fertiliser introduced antibiotic-resistant bacteria into the soil. “These results should give us pause for thought. Because the resistant genes which are still in the soil today can also appear in the crops grown on the fertilised soil and can thus enter the human food chain,” Prof. Kornelia Smalla from the Institute described a possible scenario as long ago as 2007.

END/nna/ung

Links: http://www.bund-sachsen.de/index.php?show=aktuelles&date=26.05.2011&content=text/aktuelles/20110526guelle.txt&header=BUND%20Sachsen:%20G%FCllewirtschaft%20%96%20ein%20Privileg%20zum%20T%F6ten?, http://www.bund.net/bundnet/service/suche/?pub_searchWords=Massentierhaltung&x=0&y=0, http://www.landwirtschaftskammer.de/landwirtschaft/ackerbau/gruenland/guelleduengung-pdf.pdf, http://www.bund.net/fileadmin/bundnet/publikationen/landwirtschaft/20100200_landwirtschaft_agrarreform_statt_massentierhaltung_broschuere.pdf, http://www.ostseeblick-nienhagen.de/news/1267438537-volle-guellefæsser-bereiten-bauern-probleme-ausbringen-verboten/, http://www.bfr.bund.de/de/fragen_und_antworten_zu_ehec_infektionen_durch_pflanzliche_lebensmittel-70663.html#topic_70666, http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news215321

Item: 110602-01EN Date: 2 June 2011

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