While it may seem contradictory to report that 70,000 people in the US get some food poisoning every year from eating beef (their chances of actually dying from it are slightly less than 1-in-a-1,000), beef is still the safest single source of animal protein. A study by Presi et al, 2009 (cited below) of relative risk of potential (not guaranteed!) bacterial contamination of meat gave a score of 6.7, out of 100 cases, to chicken products, 4.0 out of 100 cases, to pork products and 0.4% out of 100 to beef products.
Does this mean that any of these foods will make you sick once every 18 times (chicken), once every 25 times (pork) or once every 250 times (beef) that you prepare or consume it?
The answer is resoundingly “No,” because consumers can do a great deal to prevent their being food poisoned.
Indeed it is far more likely that most cases of food poisoning are due to mishandling at home than mismanagement at the packing plant or supermarket.
Simple measures like adequate refrigeration after purchase, washing the meat before cooking it, using clean cutting boards and knives for preparing the raw meat, thorough cooking, and then using different clean utensils, cutting boards, and dishes for its carving and serving, have an almost 100% chance of eliminating bacterial food poisoning.
Nonetheless, the safety advantage of beef reported in this study is well worth exploring further.
THE BEEF INDUSTRY HAS LEARNED FROM ITS SORRY HISTORY
The meatpacking industry got a well-deserved black eye with the 1906 best-selling publication of Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, in which all manner of food handling filth and cruelty to man and beast were portrayed. It was based on the author’s familiarity with exploited Lithuanian workers in that line of work, and while it contained what some screenwriters today would call “dramatizations”, the remaining gruesome details were undeniable, despite the industry’s first attempts to cover it all up.
The public outcry was so striking that President Theodore Roosevelt pressured the industry to the degree that beef industry representatives actually petitioned Congress for the passage of Meat Inspection Act. That pressure likely had more to do with decreased sales of beef than from any genuinely enlightened motives.
Nonetheless, that pain in the wallet led to quite a change of heart, and today the beef industry is not only in close cooperation with the USDA’s FSIS (Food Safety & Inspection Service) in terms of inspection compliance and improved meatpacking plant design and operations, but is one of the biggest supporters of food protection research at America’s land grant universities (this author’s employer, included).
KNOWING THE ENEMY, E. COLI O157:H7
While a wide variety of bacteria can contaminate beef products (and vegetarians take note, just about any other food, including most vegetables and fruits), the particular focus of the beef industry is rightly on E. coli O157:H7.
It is the microbe most often isolated from the sickest food poisoning patients, who are generally children, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems.
What distinguishes this form of E.coli from the hundreds of other E. coli that live peaceably in your own gut is its production of special toxins. These toxins induce severe cramps and diarrhea, which is often bloody, but notably, they rarely induce high fever ( a peculiar detail that apparently aids doctors in diagnosis) .
What makes this bacterium hard to eradicate in the food processing chain is that it is unusually cold hardy: it survives the classically frigid meat packing temperatures that arrest the development and inhibit the spread (and sometimes kill outright) other food-associated bacteria like campylobacter, listeria, and staphylococci.
E. COLI O175:H7 HIDES ON THE HIDE
One of the most important pieces of the fundamental science of E. coli O157:H7 is that it does not naturally invade the muscle tissue -----the part of the animal that we eat----- of a living steer. Rather, after living peaceably (for the steer, that is) within the gut, it is defecated out in what are commonly referred to as cow pies, those multi-pound-weight plops of soft, steamy dung that give the beef and dairy farm its characteristic earthy aroma.
From there, it makes its way onto the hide of the steer through the animal’s walking through or laying onto these cow pies. Hides from one steer can contaminate another steer’s through brushing against one another or just leaving enough dung in holding pens, feedlot fence rails, or barn walls, for the E. coli O157:H7 to be transmitted along with traces of manure.
Indeed, there are several reports in the US and Canada that children at petting zoos or at state fairs where prize livestock animals are shown have gotten E. coli O157:H7 quite literally from petting the hides of the living animals, or otherwise putting hands in contact with manure stained fixtures, and then eating or drinking without washing the hands thoroughly.
And it should be noted that not only were cows and steers involved, but goats, and even rabbits. And, while there is some controversy as to whether or not alcohol-based hand cleaning solutions work as well as soap and water, there is unanimity that washing one’s hands before eating or drinking is a pretty effective preventative.
WASHING THE BEEF AS WELL AS THE HANDS & CUTTING TOOLS
Today’s best meatpacking practices involve multiple washings, starting with the hides before the meat is processed much beyond euthanizing the steer and making certain primal cuts (decapitation) etc.
Washing works because at this point the E.coli O157:H1 is primarily a “surface of the meat” invader, and as long and as often as the surface can be washed clean the bacteria can be killed or at least held at bay. While one cannot add antibiotics to the washes, agents that aid in removal of both the bacteria and residual dirt, essentially anything that could have been left from the hide, are beneficial.
So are washing agents that change the pH of the surface, because research has shown that E. coli O157:H7 has a preferred range of acidity/alkalinity. These agents are, of course, nontoxic to humans, and are generally rinsed away the closer the meat comes to its retail cut.
Scrupulous washing of knives and machine-powered cutting tools is also a must, all along the carcass breaking and cutting line, as the possibility of even one badly contaminated side of beef making it through can introduce E. coli O157:H7 to all the subsequent meat processed using the same equipment.
Such is the effectiveness of these washings that intact, solid cuts of meat, for example, a large roast, or even a thick steak, are the very least likely to give one a case of E. coli O157:H7, even if the meat is cooked rare on the inside.
That is because the exposed surface area of these intact, solid chunks can be readily washed (eliminating the bulk of the bacteria) and then be exposed to high heat (which kills off the remainder) without the interior having to be well-done (Warning: this observation is accurate but does not reflect USDA recommendations which basically want all meat cooked medium-well to well-done to err on the side of safety).
THE SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF GROUND BEEF AND HAMBURGER
While ground beef is technically different from hamburger in the sense that ground beef has to be made from a uniform portion of the same animal (i.e. ground sirloin, ground chuck, etc.) while hamburger is made from ground beef to which can be added trimmings from other cuts and carcasses ----- both share a peculiar problem: the process of grinding takes the meat on the surface (meat that potentially has surface dwelling E. coli O157:H7, and folds it in, again and again, into the interior of the pile of now ground meat, while exposing more and more meat to the surface where it can pick up any environmentally available E. coli O157:H7.
In a sense, a solid eye of the round roast that weighs 5 pounds probably has a surface area of around 300 square inches (think one side of three sheets of photocopy paper), but put that same five pounds of meat through a grinder and you have multiplied the proportion of meat that has at least once been exposed to a surface a hundred fold.
Does this mean that hamburger is inherently unsafe to eat?
The answer is once again, an emphatic “No.”
Basically, cooking your hamburger to about 160 degrees internal temperature (medium well done) means that you are very likely to have a safe hamburger, even if at some point it was exposed to E. coli O157:H7 on some of its original surface area.
Does this mean that those fast food restaurant burgers that are grilled on one side and then flipped to be cooked on the other side are safe to eat? The answer is, in fact, yes, according to Ou and Mittal, 2007 (cited below). Even when using frozen patties, the heat ultimately penetrates the interior and kills the bacteria.
OTHER MEAT PROCESSESING MEASURES TO CONTROL E. COLI O157:H7
Some of the most innovative steps to control E. coli O157:H7 in hamburger today involve the use of natural food ingredients. While it may seem surprising, ingredients such as dried apple peel powder, tea, acid from citrus fruits, and even cranberry and oregano extracts, are in the experimental stage in the US (where the regulations against additives in ground meet and hamburger are quite strict), and may already be coming into use abroad.
In an even more curious finding, lactobacillus bacteria, similar to the type used in yogurt, seems to inhibit E. coli O157:H7 rather effectively.
Why the use of these products instead of “chemical additives” (even though all “natural” and even all “organic” products are composed of chemicals, of course)?
The answer is at least partly the likelihood that they will have greater consumer acceptance, and partly because these introduced food stuffs are GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) by the FDA.
An example of a technology that is very highly effective in controlling E. Coli O157:H7 is meat irradiation, using x-rays, gamma-rays-, or an electron beam. However, consumers mistakenly fear that irradiated meat is somehow “radioactive,” which is no more true than if you would become radioactive if you as a patient had gotten an x-ray.
Nonetheless, current FDA regulations require that the universal symbol for radioactivity be placed on any package with irradiated beef or hamburger, and this turns off far too many consumers to make this potentially life-saving food technology more widely used.
This is unfortunate, particularly since one legitimate consumer complaint about irradiated beef, off-taste in the fat owing to rapid oxidation, can now be offset with special processing using natural materials.
FIGHTING E. COLI O157:H7 AT ITS SOURCE ON THE FARM
Research on the farm continues apace. There are some suggestions that having too many mixed animals in close proximity to the cattle (for example having pigs nearby) increases the chances of E. Coli O157:H7, because some of these other farm animals also carry the germ.
Likewise, the long established process of showing one’s livestock appears to spread E. coli O157:H7, in the sense that if one of the cattle is a “super-shedder” (one of a minority of steers or cows in most herds, whose cow pies are dramatically richer in the bacteria), it will spread it to the others who will bring it back to their home herd.
Finally, there is some controversy over whether or not supplementary diets rich in corn or the use of certain pasture grasses or straw that may have their own microbial load might not increase the chances, because they somehow alter the gut microbiology of which the E.coli O157:H7 is a part.
Probably the most promising development is the introduction of immunizations against E. coli O157:H7 (see Neuman, 2007, cited below). While they are by no means 100% effective, they seem to have enough power to knock down the ambient numbers of E.coli O157:H7 of even the “super-shedders. ” .
Because reducing the amount of E. coli O157:H7 that manages to get on the hide seems to be the very best place for the farmer to start, and the practice could become more widespread in the US (it is better established In Canada where a major supplier is based) particularly if beef prices rise enough to cover the $45 per head cost. Of particular note is that the fact that unlike antibiotics, these inoculations leave absolutely no residues that are passed on to the consumer, because they essentially disappear as they are incorporated into the animals own antibodies.
Tony Stankus, FSLA, tstankus@uark.edu Life Sciences Librarian, Science Coordinator & Professor
University of Arkansas Libraries MULN 223E
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