ABSTRACT
Knowledgeable consumers expect not only high sensory quality of food, but also need the elimination of risks from frequently dangerous microbial, biological, and chemical contamination. Microbial contamination results from negligence during the transport, storage, and production stages, as well as from genetic variability and metabolic ˜exibility of micro-organisms. An example of such ˜exibility is the bacterium Escherichia coli. These micro-organisms were characterized many years ago as human and animal commensals or pathogens. They were categorized into 6 groups and 190 serotypes. In 2011, a new strain of E. coli occurred in Germany-a highly pathogenic, enteroaggregative strain of serotype O104:H4 that caused an outbreak involving 3842 cases of human infections, including 51 deaths. The disease resulted from the consumption of contaminated sprouted fenugreek seeds (Beutin and Martin 2012). More than 800 people infected had symptoms of hemolytic uremic syndrome, which may lead to loss of kidney functions. Apart from Germans, there were also residents of other countries, especially France, Denmark, and Sweden, among the infected people. The contaminated seeds were probably imported from Egypt. The major causes of the outbreak were globalization of raw materials, lack of adequate hygienic standards in mass production, and international migrations of people.
