Perhaps it was in the bean sprouts…

German officials declared today that domestically grown bean sprouts may be the source of the Escherichia coli (E. coli) outbreak that has killed 22 people so far and sickened at least 1,600!

German authorities have yet to fully complete testing to determine whether the E. coli strain can indeed be traced to a northern German bean-sprout farm in Lower Saxony.

The German E. coli has thus far affected people from 12 countries.  Agriculture ministry officials in the German state of Lower Saxony say that they had found a correlation between a local bean-sprout grower and at least five restaurants where diners were stricken with the deadly bacterial strain.

The bean-sprout supplier was also forthcoming that one of their employees had become ill with an E. coli infection, and the warm, damp conditions for growing bean sprouts are ideal for the bacterial strain!

"This all, in combination with the different clues, makes the chances of this [supplier] being the source pretty high," said Gert Hahne, a spokesman for the Lower Saxony ministry.

The bean-sprout supplier, who is located in southern Lower Saxony, has been shut down and its products have been recalled. They are also testing the alleged E. coli-infected sprouts to determine if they might be one of or the only source of the outbreak.

Meanwhile, a shipment of cucumbers from Spain that were infected with E. coli, have turned out to be of a different strain.