Salad scares and price plunges

For fourteen Germans, the last cucumber they ate proved to be the carrier of a killer.

A few days after the news of the escherichia coli-infected Spanish cucumbers hit the Bulgarian media, the sale price of cucumbers has halved. Merchants from the Kirkovski market in the capital, however, claim that this is not because of the disease's outbreak in Germany, but because of the season.

Indeed, the prices of closely-held to the heart of the Bulgarian vegetables plummets during the summer and with more and more produce, the fall in prices at this time of the year is to be expected. According to the traders in the market, the customers are more interested in the price of the cucumbers that they are buying than "the health scares from the media."

The news about the dangerous cucumbers, however, proved to be worrying enough for some fast food companies. According to Petar Bonchev, the owner of a fast food franchise restaurant in Sofia, an email was sent out from the headquarters of the company, ordering all cucumbers stocks to be disposed of and for the vegetable to be taken off the menu until it is deemed safe for consumption.

Specialists say, however, that even an infected cucumber can be made perfectly safe, providing it is cleaned carefully and peeled. According to Professor Donka Baykova, a food and diet specialist, rinsing the vegetables thoroughly with running hot water is enough to wash the bacteria away. She adds that if people are still reluctant to include cucumbers in their diet, courgettes and members of the lettuce family have a similar mineral and chemical content and can be used as replacements.