BERLIN, Germany -- An E. coli outbreak that killed 17 people across Europe has also killed diplomatic ties between certain EU members as political tensions increased over accusations and blame-shifting. Russia announced Tuesday that it had enacted a ban on all European vegetable shipments, even though the embargo would leave its citizens with only beets and turnips as produce choices. The biggest conflict, however, took root between Germany and Spain. Though investigators believe the outbreak originated in Germany, the German government initially placed the blame on cucumbers imported from Spain. In response, Spanish officials accused Germany of an aggressive, inhumane, and misguided campaign of “vegecide.”

Germany Attacks Spanish Soil
A Spanish food safety expert told reporters that Germany’s actions were “a disgraceful, irresponsible, and unprovoked attack on our soil.”

In Madrid, vendors expressed frustration with consumers refusing to purchase their cucumbers since German food and drug authorities pronounced all non-Germanic cucumber variants “impure.”

In Valencia, farmers dumped piles of smashed vegetables at the doors of the German consulate in protest. And in Munich, where sympathetic Spanish expats orchestrated similar demonstrations, a thuggish cadre of militant farmers calling themselves “Braune Daumen” (“Brown Thumbs”) joined forces with police to round up all Spaniards in the area. Sources in Munich allege that neighborhoods with large Spanish populations have been walled off and segregated from the rest of the city.

“The response in Germany, as one might expect, has been swift and severe,” said Heimlich Magen, a German-American agricultural investigator based in San Narciso County. “The Bundesministerium für Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Verbraucherschutz (Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection) has already dispatched agents to identify and collect all Spanish cucumbers in the country. Those people found harboring fugitive vegetables from Spain are also being arrested, with the contents of their kitchens confiscated.”

Germans Criticized for Austere, Unnecessary Purification Process
Magen explained that the German government’s plan is to destroy all foreign contaminants, for the protection of its people.

“They truly believe they are keeping German blood pure by exterminating all foreign bodies that might have spread into the stock,” Magen continued. “This is a nation of unparalleled efficiency. They have already reactivated some unused factories from the 1940s, and re-engineered the incinerators to accommodate vast amounts of tainted cucumbers. So far, the process has involved labelling the suspicious vegetables to separate them from the clean German produce. Agents from the BELV then load the cucumbers onto special trains, which transport them to the incinerators. The underdeveloped and younger cucumbers are lined up and shot, then buried together in massive ditches, while the more dangerous vegetables are stuffed into the industrial ovens and immolated in seconds.”

According to Magen’s data, Germany has currently destroyed approximately six million cucumbers.

Spanish officials on Friday demanded that the United Nations and NATO impose sanctions on Germany. They also requested a full investigation into the activities of Japan and Italy, citing intelligence that suggested their complicity in the atrocities.

More to come as the story develops.

(c) 2011. All stories are works of satire and parody.