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The European Commission said on Tuesday it would ask EU members to release 150 million euros ($220 million) in aid to European vegetable producers whose sales have been decimated by a deadly bacteria outbreak, AFP reported. The compensation will cover the period from the start of the crisis in late May to late June, he said, adding that the figure could change depending on the losses calculated by different EU members. Ciolos said it was crucial for authorities in Germany, the epicenter of the crisis, to find the source of an outbreak that killed two more people, raising the death toll on Tuesday to 25. All but one of the deaths reported since mid-May have occurred in Germany. The other fatality was a woman in Sweden who had recently returned from Germany. Authorities are yet to identify the source of the outbreak, which has left over 2,300 people ill in at least 14 countries. German consumers are advised to avoid raw sprouts, cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce. "If we do not know the likely culprit in a week's time, we may never know the cause," Guenael Rodier, director of communicable diseases at the WHO, told the AP on Tuesday. Hopes that the source of contamination had finally been located suffered a setback Monday, when initial probes carried out on a farm growing a variety of organic sprouts in the northern state of Lower Saxony proved to be negative. The money proposed by the EU's executive arm is far less than the losses claimed by farmers across Europe. Belgian Agriculture Minister Sabine Laruelle estimated losses for EU farmers "in the hundreds of millions of euros." Spain alone, furious after German authorities wrongly suspected its cucumbers of being the source of the bacteria, says the crisis has cost its growers 225 million euros ($330 million) per week and warned Berlin it would take it to court if it refuses to pay back 100 percent of the losses. French, Dutch, Belgian and Portuguese farmers have also demanded some form of compensation. German farmers have not been spared by the loss in consumer confidence and estimate their losses at 50 million euros ($73 million). Agencies |
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