Coliform confusion

Criticism of journalists for creating confusion and needless anxiety is sometimes fully justified. On other occasions, at least part of the blame lays elsewhere. Consider the following. A headline in the Sunday Times on 14 May read: “Killer bug alert over organic vegetables.” The story continued “Tesco yesterday withdrew all organic mushrooms from its shelves after routine checks by environmental health officials discovered E. coli 0157 in a pack of mushrooms.” Reminding readers of the outbreak of food poisoning caused by this organism in 1996, when 21 people died in Lanarkshire, the writer highlighted the dangers of faecal contamination of organic food. The following day, the Daily Mail splashed “Organic food in E-Coli [sic] safety alert” on its front page. “Tests on organic foods have found alarmingly high levels of potentially deadly bacteria,” the account began. The Tesco incident was coupled with news of a US study at the University of Georgia showing that E. coli levels (presumably total counts, not just 0157) were 100-fold higher in organic lettuce than in non-organic lettuce. Yet both accounts were also contradictory. The Daily Mail, despite the banner headline and purple prose, told readers: “Further tests showed it was a harmless variety of the bacteria.” The Sunday Times said: “Tests later showed the mushrooms contained a ‘non-toxic’ version of the potentially fatal E-coli 0157.” Likewise, readers of the Mirror learned that “Killer bacteria has [sic] been found in organic food... Later tests showed the bug was harmless.” Newspapers might reasonably be expected to drop a story about a hazard that had been shown, even before publication, to be non-existent. On the other hand, they would not be expected to know much about the relationships between benign and enteropathogenic varieties of Escherichia coli. In particular, news editors could scarcely be aware that the production of Shiga toxins or Verotoxins is one of the defining characteristics of E. coli 0157. A non-toxic strain of a toxic organism is a nonsense. So how did the confusion arise? It came from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) — recently established in response to public concerns over the safety of food. On 12 May, the agency issued a statement stating that “Limited testing has shown the possible presence of E. coli 0157 in a 200 gram pack of Tesco organic mushrooms.” As a precautionary measure, Tesco had withdrawn all organic mushrooms from sale. Consumers who had purchased any were advised not to eat them.