Bean sprouts were briefly added to the list of foods seen as potential sources of E. coli 0104—a new strain that has infected more than 2,300 people and killed 23 in Germany over the past three weeks. The list of potentially dangerous foods includes cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, and other raw salad vegetables.
The rapid reprieve for sprouts can be attributed to the availability of high-speed pathogen-specific tests. These assays, laboratory procedures that measure the biochemical activities of food samples, can now return reliable results in as little as 10 to 24 hours.
"As soon as we finished sequencing the DNA of this strain, we made the results public, like any ethical company would," says Nir Nimrodi, head of food safety at Life Technologies, which has developed a custom test for E. coli 0104.
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