The root of the international salmonella alert the Spanish authorities issued last week was a restaurant in Vitoria, 13 customers of which fell ill. Three ... of them required hospitalisation after eating a Spanish omelette made with eggs contaminated with the Salmonella Enteritidis bacterium, according to sources at the Basque Country's regional ministry of health. All patients have now been discharged.
After detecting the salmonella outbreak "more than a month ago", the health authorities launched an investigation. "We traced the eggs back to their source in Aragon," they said. The Aragon regional government then identified that the eggs had come from a farm in Zaragoza.
The RASFF (the EU's rapid alert system for food and feed) issued the subsequent alert on 8 October after it discovered that a sample from a few days earlier had detected Salmonella Enteritidis in fresh eggs from Spain. This product was distributed to other EU countries such as Portugal and France, meaning that the scope of the alert was not limited to the domestic market.
The Spanish authorities withdrew the eggs in question from the market. However, the product had already been distributed to eight regions. The cases of salmonella detected in Vitoria confirm that the eggs did reach the Basque Country, but neither Aesan (the Spanish agency for food safety and nutrition) nor the CCAES (health alerts coordination centre) have so far officially reported the number of people affected, their condition or the parts of Spain to which the eggs were distributed.
The Ocu consumers' organisation demanded detailed information on Tuesday. In a statement, it noted that the RASFF had classified the outbreak as "serious" and that, despite this, the information available to consumers was "very limited".
"The brands, the quantities recalled, the regions where the eggs were distributed and the actual extent of the incident have not been made public," the Ocu said.