BERLIN, June 10 (UPI) -- Locally grown bean sprouts caused an outbreak of E.coli that killed 29 people and sickened nearly 3,000, a German health official said Friday.
Reinhard Burger, chief of the Robert Koch Institute, the German institution responsible for disease control and prevention, said an epidemiological investigation into the pattern of the outbreak yielded enough evidence to draw that conclusion, even though tests of the sprouts from a Lower Saxony farm returned negative, The Daily Telegraph reported.
"It is the sprouts," Burger said. "People who ate sprouts were nine times more likely to have bloody diarrhea than those who did not."
Officials initially blamed the outbreak on imported cucumbers, then bean sprouts.
He said the institute would lift its warning against eating cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce but keep a warning for the sprouts.
