Bulgaria will declare losses of EUR 10 M from unsold cucumbers due to the E.coli outbreak, Minister Miroslav Naydenov announced in Luxemburg at at the emergency talks among EU Agriculture ministers.

One of the key topics on the agenda of the forum will be options for reimbursing vegetable producers in the EU for the inaccurate warnings that the outbreak might be linked to Spanish organic cucumbers.

The news about the deadly bacteria caused consumption of cucumbers to plummet.

Bulgarian cucumber producers have suffered a loss of BGN 1 M per day since the onset of the cucumber crisis, which translates into a loss of BGN 7 M per week, Miroslav Naydenov specified.

Spain, on the other hand, claimed that local farmers had clocked up losses of EUR 200 M per week.

The estimations about losses in Bulgaria come from the Bulgarian Greenhouse Association and match the data supplied to the Agriculture Ministry.

Naydenov warned that, should the crisis persist, domestic producers will see losses increase.

In the meantime, the European Commission (EC) said it will ask EU countries to grant EUR 150 M in aid to European vegetable producers hit by the cucumber scare.

EU Commissioner Dacian Colos urged German health authorities to find the source of the deadly bacteria as soon as possible, insisting on prompt and clear results about the contamination in order to restore consumer confidence.

Over 2300 cases of E.coli infection in more than 14 countries in Europe have been reported so far.

Twenty-two people have died as a result of the outbreak in Germany and one other person died from it in Sweden.

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