Two residents of Gyumri were hospitalized with botulism after eating some cucumbers that they had pickled and canned three weeks before.

It appears that they failed to can the cucumbers correctly.

Making matters worse, botulism does not affect the color, taste or smell of the food infected.

The most common source of food-borne botulism is home-canned foods prepared in an unsafe manner. Safety measures must be taken when performing home canning, since ingestion of toxin in food produced by Clostridium botulinum can cause death.