[silverleaf]

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/06/the_german_e_coli_outbreak_40.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+news%2Frss%2Fthe_great_beyond+%28The+Great+Beyond+-+Blog+Posts%29&utm_content=Twitter&WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews

seems it’s going human-to-human, and people are still getting sick although at a slower rate

the sprout farm is hydroponic so it’s not manure that introduced the bacteria, but most likely a human host

[BIGLOOK]

Matters little that the farm is hydroponic or oganic if human fecal matter was accidentally (or deliberately) introduced into the system. I haven't much experience with hydroponics but some mostly that they didn't work all that well on the crops we tried to grow. Bean sprouts of course would be an exception since they only take a few days to grow until harvested.

Correct me if wrong but in the hydroponic system the solution is recycled until subtantially depleted of its nutrients then replaced. But replacement may not matter much either if the bacteria found a home in the irrigation system even if not as compatible as the human gut.

Then there's still the problem of identifying the original host who's probably a farm laborer who started this bacterial infection.