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Ministers tell Brussels to increase E. coli aid pledge

  • Spanish cucumber sales are among the worst affected (Photo: sharyn morrow)

The European Commission has said it will increase an earlier offer to provide €150 million in compensation to struggling European vegetable producers, after EU farm ministers said the sums were insufficient to counteract falling sales caused by the region's ongoing E. coli scare.

EU agriculture commissioner Dacian Ciolos promised to write a "substantially" bigger cheque after meeting with EU farm ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday afternoon (7 June), with the crisis estimated to being costing producers roughly €417 million per week.

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Ciolos warned however that it would be difficult to meet the demands coming from some member states for 100 percent compensation, with the Romanian's earlier offer closer to 30 percent.

"I don't think that the [EU] budget will allow us to reach 100 percent for all goods and all producers," he said.

The announcement came as Germany's health minister said there was reason to be cautiously optimistic that an outbreak of the deadly new E. coli strain had peaked, although German authorities are still struggling to find the source of the bacteria.

Erroneous German finger-pointing at organic Spanish cucumbers has provoked a fierce backlash from Madrid, with further tests results on Monday evening suggesting that suspect number two - a bean sprout farm in northern Germany - was also a false lead.

The EU's Ciolos also warned that consumers were losing confidence with each day that the correct source of the outbreak remained unknown.

"I hope that the authorities will be able to give an answer on the source of the infection as quickly as possible," he said. "Without this answer, it will be difficult to regain the trust of consumers, which is essential for the market to regain its strength."

The death toll continued to mount on Tuesday, with revised figures now totaling 24 deaths. Over 2,300 people have fallen ill in at least 14 countries, with all-but-one deaths and the vast majority of sicknesses occurring in Germany.

Scientists say the E. coli bacterium at the heart of the current crisis is a new variant.

Like other strains, it lives in the gut of warm-blooded animals and can cause bloody diarrhoea, fever and vomiting. In extreme cases in can develop into haemolytic uraemic syndrome, a potentially fatal kidney condition.

News of the outbreak has seen vegetable sales tumble, with Russia going as far as to ban all imports of EU-produced vegetables.

Speaking to journalists in Brussels on Tuesday, Russian Ambassador to the 27-member bloc Vladimir Chizhov defended the ban, saying Moscow was being provided with only limited data.

Jokingly referring to the deadly baterium as "EU. coli", Chizhov said the pan-European ban could be made more country specific if the worst affected regions were isolated.

This article was update at 8.20am on Wednesday 8 June

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