It would be thought in an Agatha Christie

It would be thought in an Agatha Christie. From Hamburg, people die one after the other. The murder weapon was quickly found: the terrible bacterium Escherichia coli. A culprit is soon singled out by the local authorities and then European, a strong worker: Mr. Concombre Spanish. The world falling on it. He is booed, rejected, banished. But this is not the true culprit. For the latest news, it would be a fragile names of Asian origin, Mr. germ of soybean... There is almost matter to smile if there was not, as Jack Lang, "death of man". And if there were not also, behind a great food and economic mess with thousands of tonnes of lost goods and hundreds of farmers in financial distress. Could not waste such a crisis. You will here a lesson, lighting and a parable.

The lesson is obvious: in the era of instant information and resonance caisses that are Internet and Twitter, reputation is an issue and therefore a greater risk than before. This reputation may be altered in many ways - Renault by false case of espionage, BP with the explosion of oil platform, formerly Danone with its social plans. But the danger is particularly great when it is the quality of a product that is in question, and more still when it comes to a food product. We had already seen with the Perrier for benzene, mad cow disease prion, the mysterious Belgian Coca to the disturbing agent or camembert for listeria. This time, the specialists can even draw beautiful maps of impact: affected Spanish cucumber at 100, Dutch cousin caught in the turmoil, Rungis sales fall of 95 and 40 for tomato... The question of the liability will arise with more and acuity. Because false information can kill of real businesses with real employees.

The lighting is more surprising. Because this crisis is an opportunity to discover the Europe of the cucumber. The Germans here are crazed consumers. They swallow 640.000 tons per year (20 grams per day and per capita), against less than 200,000 tons in France (6 grams per capita and per day). And the champions of the production are the Netherlands and the Spain, with very different profiles. The Dutch have developed production post-war, with two major innovations: innovation "process" (culture under greenhouse) and a "product" innovation (plants that have more need to be pollinated). They were the first producers of the continent until the turn of the century, with a very intensive culture (70 kilos per year per square metre, one hundred times more than the wheat!). Their production is stagnating for twenty years a little over 400,000 tonnes. The Spanish later developed a less intensive culture, with ten times less performance. But production continues to rise. Approaching the 700,000 tonnes last year, it has doubled in 15 years. And the Poland rises in turn very quickly. Last year, according to provisional figures, it would have produced 400,000 tonnes...

The parable, it deals with Europe. As the crisis of the cucumber was clearly European. The Union is passionate about for a long time for the lacanobia, which grows in the field of the common agricultural policy. One remembers that it in had defined the curvature in its famous Regulation 1677/88 ("maximum height of the arc: 10 mm to 10 cm of length of the cucumber"...). This time, it is she who has relayed - wrongly - the tocsin of Hamburg. And the charge on the carrier of Escherichia coli immediately turned to the confrontation between two major countries of the Union, the Germany and the Spain. Can a Europe which empaille on cucumber really move forward Can share a tool as powerful as a currency when its countries are unable to properly resolve a history of dirty vegetables At this point in history, could be despair. It is believe almost in a country remake of the crisis of European public debt, with many identical actors in neighbouring roles. But Mr Zapatero and Ms. Merkel managed to talk live cucumber. And the Commission now seeking to compensate growers. In other words, to play European solidarity, the solidarity without which we emerge not the public debt crisis. We are going, all is not lost.