Germany finds deadly E. coli virus in Spanish cucumbers

German health officials said Thursday that cucumbers imported from Spain was one source of a recent deadly E. coli outbreak in northern states that killed three people and made hundreds sick. The Hamburg Institute for Hygiene and the Environment (HU) found that  four cucumbers in a local market were contaminated by Enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), and three of them were imported from two separate Spanish suppliers, Hamburg state health authorities said.The origin of the fourth cucumber was still under investigation, officials added.German supermarkets began to pull Spanish cucumbers off shelves Thursday afternoon following the findings in Hamburg. The food- monitoring agencies in the northern states were launching investigations on vegetable markets, the federal agriculture ministry said in a statement .Figures showed that Spain is Germany's second largest supplier of cucumbers within the European Union, accounting for some 40 percent of the country's cucumber imports.