Associated Press:  Berlin - European health officials tracking one of the worst E. coli outbreaks on record might never know where it came from.  Its a sad fact of life in food poisoning cases: There is often no smoking gun.  Germany's national health agency said Wednesday that more than 1,530 people there had been sickened by a dangerous E. coli germ, including 17 dead, 470 suffering from a kidney failure complication that was previously considered rare.  Most patients who have been interviewed said they ate lettuce, tomatoes or cucumbers, but officials testing produce across the continent have yet to find any vegetables with the particular strain involved.  Illnesses can occur days after tainted food is eaten and leftovers thrown out, "so the trail gets cold pretty quick," said Bill Marler, a Seattle attorney who specializes in food poisoning cases.  "They might never find the cause of the outbreak," said Paul Hunter, professor of health protection at England's University of East Anglia.  "In most foodborne outbreaks, we don't know definitively where the contaminated food came from."  The outbreak has hit at least nine European countries, but virtually all the sick people either live in Germany, or recently traveled there.  Two people who were sickened are now in the US and both had recently traveled to Hamburg, Germany, where many of the infections occurred.  The outbreak is already considered the third largest involving E. coli in recent world history, and it may be the deadliest.  Twelve people died in a 1996 Japanese outbreak that reportedly sickened more than 12,000, and seven died in a 2000 Canadian outbreak that also made thousands ill.  Where the dangerous germ came from is just one of the questions health officials have.  Another is why patients are suffering from life-threatening kidney complications in an unusually high percentage of cases.  It might mean the strain is particularly virulent, but it's also possible that thousands of less serious cases of food poisoning have gone unreported.  People with less severe symptoms may contact health authorities later, or not at all, Kruse said.  Kruse said the outbreak is different, in that it affects mainly adults and predominantly women.  Some experts say that likely has to do with the diet - women tend to eat more fresh produce.  The bacteria being tested is one of the few dangerous types among the hundreds of different E. coli bugs.  People and animals carry various E. coli in their intestines, but only a very small percentage are deadly.  One of the most notorious was a strain that killed four children in the US in 1993 and was linked to contaminated hamburgers at a fast-food chain.  In Germany there are no spot checks of imported food coming from the 25 countries that are part of a zone that lacks internal border patrols.  In the US, labs regularly check for dangerous E. coli type in stool samples from people with food poisoning symptoms, but only a small percentage of the labs test for other forms of E. coli that make people sick.  In recent years, investigators have found that a wider variety of E. coli bugs are also causing illness.  

My Comments:  Jesus spoke of what would come in the last days, before His return:  Matthew 24:7, "Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in different places."  Luke 21:11, "Great earthquakes will be in different places and famines, pestilences and fearful sights and great signs in heaven."