Instead of utopia and paradise, Germany’s green dreams are delivering an ecological nightmare, turning the country into a toxic cesspool of lethal man-made biocides: botulism and now E-coli bacteria. Millions of consumers are now at risk.
A few days ago I wrote about how biogas plants are producing and distributing deadly botulism throughout Germany and how a thousand farms and thousands of heads of cattle have been infected, along with wildlife. Even humans have been infected.
Worse, the media and authorities are choosing to ignore the problem completely – and thus are putting thousands of lives at risk. Veterinary officials even refuse to ban the slaughter of botulism-infected cattle (to avoid the compensation of farmers by the state), and so the meat of the botulism-infected cattle is being marketed to consumers!
Now E-coli bacteria – likely from organic farms
Now there’s a new deadly bacteria released that is rapidly spreading rampantly all over Germany – E-coli bacteria. So far it has infected and sickened hundreds of Germans and has claimed the lives of 2 people. The online Bild daily here reports that on Saturday an 83-year old woman died of the “Killer-Bacteria E-coli” and that a 25-year old woman died yesterday in Bremen – showing the symptoms (tests must still be done to confirm the E-coli). Bild writes:
The E-coli bacteria are spreading at a rapid speed in Germany. About 300 people have been infected thus far, over 40 patients are suffering from the life-threatening hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS), which is caused by the intestinal bacteria. It leads to kidney failure, damage to blood vessels and anemia.
and
A spokesman at the Hamburg Health Dept.: ‘The situation is serious!’ “
The news of the E-coli epidemic is making headlines everywhere; authorities are in a state of alarm.
The bacteria cause bloody diarrhea and intestinal bleeding, and can lead to death if not treated in time.
Origin of the deadly bacteria
Officials are searching feverishly for the origin. Media reports and experts say the source is very likely from raw, unwashed vegetables. I immediately wondered if all that healthy organic food grown in nature without industrial processing could be the source. My suspicions seem to be well-founded. Bild writes:
The horrible suspicion: Contaminated manure, often used as fertilizer for organic vegetables could be the source!”
The Federal Institute for Hazard Assessment warned already back in January: ‘Through contact with feces, for example manure fertilizers, food plants could be burdened with E-coli.’ Martin Hofstätter, Greenpeace agriculture expert: ‘The manure is spread by the wind and lands on also on fruit and vegetables of neighbouring fields.’
It is quite possible that the contaminated manure is still finding its way onto fields.”
Someone ought to tell that Greenpeace “expert” that industrial food at least gets washed and cleanly processed according to strict quality standards, and not picked and handled by soiled hands and sold directly to consumers as “fresh and healthy”.
So much for the green paradise. Add this contamination to the list, which now includes mercury from energy saving lights, botulism from biogas plants, and cadmium in solar panels. And let’s not forget the bird-shredding windmills that litter the landscape.
Also read here: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20110524-35217.html
I had neighbor in the eighties who took on the Green lifestyle to extremes.
They were obsessed with recycling schemes and took it even so far that they fertilized their vegetable garden with their own excrement’s.
They did their thing in a bucket with straw which was emptied on a compost pile in the back of their garden, a very smelly pile I can tell which attracted huge swarms of flies.
But that was not what got them into trouble.
They reduced the boiler temperature to save energy and they got ill.
Legionnaire’s disease: http://www.hse.gov.uk/legionnaires/
They spend weeks in hospital and eventually the father died of hart failure caused by the infection.
We are now exposed to similar risk with families relying on solar collectors for their warm water supply.
The boilers connected to the solar collectors are unable to maintain a constant temperature especially in winter.
The boilers should be heated up by the conventional burner if the solar collector generates insufficient heating but many people shut the burner down in summer in order to save oil or gas.
It only takes a few day’s with overcast to reduce the boiler temperatures at levels where legionella can flourish.
I really wonder why these technologies are promoted by Government grands when these Governments are also responsible for public health.
Green farming and green energy generation come with severe risks which are not addressed despite the tons of EU directives and rulings.
We have a similar problem with gasoline/ethanol blends in cars.
Ethanol has a much lower ignition point compared to gasoline and the risks of spontanic combustion of the fuel vapors due to static electricity
when removing the tank cover has increased considerably.
This is a serious security risk that is not addressed by the car manufacturers or the owners of the fuel stations.
In fact it is not even mentioned in the information folder’s that provide information about ethanol blended fuels.
What isn’t addressed either is the water binding (and mixing) property of ethanol. For me this is the main reason not to use ethanol blends in my car. Water destroys your fuel pump and the fuel injectors.
This is apart from all the other negatives like the corrosive properties of ethanol and the fact that ethanol blended fuels have a short expiration date.
We have discussed the lack of benefits in terms of CO2 reduction of bio fuel production and the devastating effects on land use, water use and the hike in food prices extensively.
If our economies want to survive we need cheap bas load energy and stop wasting our money on Green Horror Schemes.
Thanks Ron, for these interesting anecdotes. I wasn’t aware of any legionaire’s disease problems from solar systems…please let me know if you find any reports on this.
The Greens want us to all go back and live “natural lives” like we did before technology and industry. But then they ought not be surprised when humans get attacked from all sides by viruses, bacteria, germs, fungus, diseases and life expectancy drops to 20.
A Natural Life: Nasty, Brutish, and Short!
Great piece Gosselin!
Looks like the greens are bringing black nightmares to Germany… Nothing we haven’t experienced already here in bankrupt Portugal…
But wait! You won’t believe what happened in C.S.I. Miami (8): Ep 805! Take a look here: http://www.vardulon.com/2009/10/csi-miami-episode-804_22.html
Ecotretas
Mainly affected are affluent young women. My hunch is that the source of the infection is a badly processed bio smoothie – the only people who consume that are affluent young women as it’s expensive, chic and has an aire of ecological correctness and health.
Controlling legionella in solar thermal systems
http://www.modbs.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/5638/Controlling_legionella_in__solar-thermal_systems.html
How right you are Ed,
I often wonder how much “nature” we can afford watching the floods, quakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunami’s and disease.
The Greens must be completely crazy.
Der Spiegel speculates the source could be asparagus or strawberries.
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/0,1518,764530,00.html
The German hacktivism party “Piratenpartei” (who would probably describe themselves as anarchist; that makes them for me a leftist splinter group) seems to understand its mission to be the useful imbeciles of the Greens as well. They seem to be largely identical with the German faction of “Anonymous” and the Chaos Computer Club.
In this report they deny that an attack on a French nuclear plant was planned. Notice the video, where an “operation green rights” is mentioned.
http://derstandard.at/1304552570519/Anonymous-Angriffe-auf-Kernkraftwerk-nie-moeglich-gewesen
This could become the terrorist arm of the Green political religion.
Around the world, the Greens are killing a lot more people than they’re doing in Germany.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/the-big-green-killing-machine-what-is-vad/
Pointman
“Monika Krüger, die an der Veterinärmedizinischen Fakultät der Universität Leipzig das Institut für Bakteriologie und Mykologie leitet…”
“Auch Biogasanlagen, in denen tierische Exkremente vergoren werden, stellen aus ihrer Sicht eine mögliche Quelle dar: „Die Gärreste aus diesen Anlagen werden häufig auf Futter- und Ackerflächen verteilt“, sagt die Veterinärmedizinerin.”
http://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/hamburg/article13392710/Toedliche-Bakterien-Experten-suchen-in-Hamburg-nach-Quelle.html
Monika Krüger, head of institute for bacteriology and mycology at veterinary medicine faculty at Uni Leipzig says biogas plants, in which animal dung is processed, could be a possible source for EHEC: “The remainders of the fermentation process from these plants often get distributed on areas used for feedstock and food production.”
IMHO this could explain why EHEC broke out in Northern Germany; we have plenty of biogas plants. I saw much less in the South.
If this happen in middleEast it is very usual but in awell developed country like Germany I think that is not the real cause
Contaminated cucumbers from Spain, conventional and biological
Look for press articles about workers in Spain getting ill from the same contamination.
Apparently organic food is no healthier than conventional food.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23725592-organic-food-no-healthier-blow.do
Organic food can drive people insane. 😉
Examination of a sewage treatment plant that is used as a methane-producing biogas plant shows that E. Coli does survive inside a fermenter…
Marta Carballa et al 2008,
“Technical and economic feasibility of gradual concentric chambers reactor for sewage treatment in developing countries”
http://biblio.ugent.be/input/download?func=downloadFile&fileOId=699378
“A semi-quantitative fecal coliform analysis of raw
wastewater, using Mc Conckey agar as culture media,
showed values of 108 – 1010 CFU l-1 (Table 2). The GCC
reactor effluent showed values between 2·107 and 4·107
CFU l-1, thus indicating a decrease of the fecal bacteria of
1-3 log. Although these concentrations are lower than those
reported for UASB reactor effluents (Van Haandel and
Lettinga, 1994), i.e. 1000 E. coli/100 ml, they still exceed
the discharge limit proposed by EPA (2004) (< 4.102 CFU
100 ml-1)."
Does Germany lack treatment standards for manures and wastewater sludges used as fertilizers and/or soil conditioners?
The US EPA regulates the pathogen and parasite content of these materials both by specifying maximum pathogen/parasite levels and by requiring specific treatments to reduce the levels. Generally, these treatments consist of high temperatures and/or high pH levels and contact times sufficient to kill the pathogens and parasites.
The disease potential of these materials has been known for a very long time. It is simply absurd that E. coli and botulism outbreaks are occurring in a modern society.
A regulation requires that fermenter residue must be heated at least one hour to 70 C. Still, somebody might have violated this regulation.
I think that you all miss something: “Monika Krüger, head of institute for bacteriology and mycology at veterinary medicine faculty at Uni Leipzig says biogas plants, in which animal dung is processed, could be a possible source for EHEC:…”, which means that animals carrier of this E.coli bacterium. So nobody look after animals only for dung … we eat them. In meat only 70% of this bacteria can be killed chemically, but this 30% … if you eat not really well cooked meat…. Thus some of people will get this disease from vegetables others from meat…
And this antibiotic resistants of the bacterium origin from treating animals with antibiotics so… What do you think? Let’s be impartial….
Somebody should check from where origin this dung fertilizer and to check the animals there…
Angy, regulations require that meat contaminated with feces is rejected at the slaughterhouse. Of course, this regulation could as well have been violated. But as long as you don’t consume raw meat you should be save.
The victims have also been interviewed for what they consumed, that’s how the authorities came to the list of tomatoes, cucumbers and green salad as suspect. Had they, for instance, all been consumers of raw steak, the conclusion would have been a different one.
PG,
Time for an update on this one. Look for a tie between the botulism story and the E-Coli story. Are both outbreaks centered around Hamberg? Can both be tied to a particular bio-gas plant. The fact that the E-Coli bug is recombinant of a antibiotic resistant strain and a virulent African strain tells me that manure and a high (but not high enough) temperature digester was involved. The German literature must have a lot more on this than is available in English.
The real bottom-line lesson here: Elections have consequences.
I think it is from the farm workers using the fields as their toilet and when the irrigation waters come in, it permeates the soil and food. Just my opinion.
For all the Organic haters, at the rate we are going, Organic will be a thing of the past. We have major and uncontrollable cross pollination from the GMO crops in
addition to the attack on Organic Farming in the U.S. (HR-875) and soon private parties and families will need to register with the government to grow their own food or food they may give to neighbors or sell, even though they do not cross
state lines. How convenient when an executive order has just been signed to put FEMA in control of the farms, communication and food when the shit hits the fan here in America and they declare martial law on its citizens.
However, the biggest threat to Organic farming are the chemtrails
(geoengineering) that are dumping huge amounts of aluminum, barium and
strontium (sp?), on our heads; you can see the checkerboards they are laying
across our sky and I am not talking about contrails. This is taking a
terrible toll on the organic crops and changing the ph of the soil. Luckily
and just in time, Monsanto has patented an aluminum resistant GMO seed. So
the seeds will yield one crop, and the next year the plants grow like crazy
and don’t produce any food. I have an organic garden and know of this first
hand with the GMO seeds. Everybody will have to buy seeds from Monsanto
every year. Now that is a business; having the patent on everybody’s food
source! Good thing they are trustworthy, I mean the Dept of Agriculture
just turned over their obligation and power in regard to following and documenting the affects of GMO’s to Monsanto and gave
Monsanto the choice to hire their own sub-contractor to police themselves.
How efficient!