http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healt ... inues.html


Well I will be off to get some more salad ingredients on Monday.

Just bought a load of salad stuff - didn't take em long, some of the stuff had "british produce" stickers on them.

Got to be honest, last week I had salad about everyday and I was a bit worried. Not enough to stop me buying and eating it though!

I think that the public are panicking. Particularly about English produce. I have no fears. My local greengrocer was deserted today yet I never twigged till I saw this report. For me it was a non issue. If you have any concerns wash it thoroughly. Plus as a nation we have been antibiotic crazy for too long and have not allowed our bodies to maintain immune defences.

It's an E.Coli strain that's very unusual - your body probably hasn't seen it before so can't react properly.
Like meat - make sure you cook your veg well. Stay clear of the raw stuff for now.

Yes but many people have no resisitance to any bacteria thanks to years of antibiotic misuse. Even a new strain of E.Coli will have some cell markers that our bodies will detect and can target, unless they have a whole new set of markets that our immune system takes some time reaction to.

Also everyone effected has links to trips to Germany. So it looks like they are still panicking re UK salad crops.

It's easy to wash salad and vegetables yourself, but would you trust cafes, restaurants etc to do it to your standard if you were out and about?

Salad'll be cheap this week then

No, especially after I heard about a local man developing Weil's disease after eating salad at a local restaurant. The restaurant kept the salad outside the kitchen door and a rat had urinated on it.

We've had salad twice this week and tbh I didn't wash the cucumber. Not dead yet.

I don't understand this. We're specifically buying british salad and I would have thought they'd be doing roaring trade.

The current e. coli strain is localised to a specific part of northern Germany, it has not been reported anywhere else in the world aside from the cases that involve people who travelled to that area.

You're absolutely correct, of course, but - WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!?!

Oh, FFS. There isn’t a major health scare. A few people are ill - how much of a percentage of the population is that? Considering the dangers we face every day just by going out of the front door, this reaction is inexplicable.

I had lettuce, radishes, tomatoes, peppers yesterday. I have salad pretty much every day of the week. Regular hygiene rules apply. As you were.

Well, not exactly.
Several people have died... in Germany. Given all the media attention the reaction is entirely predictable, if not terribly sensible.
Given that the UK doesn't exactly import much fresh fruit and veg from Germany there is naff all reason not to eat salady things. Sadly this point has been studiously avoided in pretty much all of the coverage I've seen on the TV. So, anyone who relies on the TV and/or news papers for information (and particularly the red tops) is being given the impression that the world is ending because of German salad.

And incidentally, the incubation period for this particular strain of e-coli is around about 8 days so you wouldn't necessarily know you were infected/ill until more than a week afterwards (hence why people who were in Germany have been getting all over the place before coming down with symptoms).

Having said that, I'm going to go and have some cucumber now.

Mostly it has been women who've been affected, and the finger is generally pointing at cucumbers.

Are we sure the cucumbers are actually being eaten?