Bacteria Outbreak Casts Pall on Spanish Produce

MOTRIL, Spain — Early June is normally one of the busiest seasons here in Spain’s farming heartland, as an army of seasonal farmworkers harvests cucumbers and tomatoes in the 5,000 greenhouses that dot the surrounding countryside. But most of the greenhouses were deserted on Wednesday, as demand for Spanish vegetables collapsed after the regional authorities initially linked a deadly outbreak of E. coli in Germany to farms in Andalusia.

Far away from hospitals in Hamburg where patients have been dying, another crisis has been unfolding in Andalusia, which was already the region worst hit by the surge in Spanish unemployment set off by the worldwide financial crisis.

“Germany has destroyed my life this week,” said Miguel Rodríguez Puentedura, who had been picking cucumbers until Monday, when the greenhouse that employed him shut down.

On Tuesday, national officials in Germany, contradicting the earlier comments from regional officials, said that tests so far showed that Spanish cucumbers did not carry the strain of E. coli bacteria that had caused the deadly outbreak. Still, they did not officially rule out produce from Spain. And on Wednesday, European officials sought to ease consumer fears about any threat from fresh produce.