By the "poisonous" cucumber incident, Austria vegetable sales have fallen sharply

The Austrian government will take a series of measures to stop the huge decline in its vegetable sales caused by the incident of "poisonous" cucumber, according to Austrian Minister of Agriculture Nikolaus Berlakovich on Friday.

The Austrian government will take a total sum of 1 million euros (about 1.4637 million U.S. dollars) from the Austrian agricultural marketing company and the EU special funds for implementing these measures. Berlakovich asked for a complete recovery in Austrian fruit and vegetable industry.

It is reported that the following measures will be implemented by the government: market promotion and information transparency, improvement in the cooperation between the farmers and restaurants.

In addition, the measures also include strengthening the origin labeling system of agricultural products in commercial circulation, in order to restore consumer confidence, resulting in an increase in sales, in particular, sales of domestic agricultural products.

According to a report published by the Austrian Press Agency ( APA) the same day, Fabian Fusseis, spokesman of the Austrian Health Ministry told the APA on Friday that there are so far no fruits and vegetables contaminated with Enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) in Austria.

He said the Austrian health sector has tested on more than 100 samples collected from all states over the past few days, and all of these samples showed negative results. These samples include vegetables imported from Spain that have been reclaimed, as well as vegetables imported from the German large-scale wholesalers.

The incident of "poisonous" cucumber spreading in Europe currently imposed a great psychological impact on the Austrian consumers.

As the largest vegetable wholesaler in Austria, "LGV- Frischgemuese", which is located in South of Vienna, admitted that they had to chuck away 500,000 cucumbers on one day (day 3.). They estimated that the loss would reach 300,000 euros by this weekend.

"Spar" and "Rewe", two Austrian supermarkets also acknowledged that their cucumber sales fell by 60 percent after the "poisonous" cucumber incident. (1 U.S. dollar = 0.6832 euros)

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