Most Common Ilness Found in Ground Beef
I love a proficient grilled hamburger equally much every bit anybody, but later reading the results of a Consumer Reports investigation published today I believe I take bought my last ground beefiness.
CR's legendary lab tested 300 samples from a wide range of producers and retailers around the country and found bacterial contagion capable of causing human illness in every last ane.
It gets worse: Nearly one in five samples – 18 percent – of conventionally produced ground beef carried "superbugs" resistant to multiple antibiotics.
For you eco-minded shoppers who buy beef labeled as grass-fed, organic, antibiotic-free or otherwise "sustainable" in CR's definition, there'south some slight comfort: Superbugs turned up in these samples at only half the charge per unit of conventional beef.
But nine percent is not nix. To paraphrase Eastward.B. White, the correct acceptable amount of superbug contagion in my burger is no contagion.
Now I know it'southward hardly a revelation that beef in its footing form carries a college adventure of foodborne affliction than steaks, roasts and other whole cuts. Mostly this is because of how it's produced – past mixing meat and trimmings from multiple animals, and distributing whatsoever surface contamination throughout the product – just also, in part, because of how it's typically handled at home.
(Did you scrub under your nails or put on polyethylene gloves earlier kneading in your spices and shaping your patties? I didn't retrieve so.)
Nor is it news that most of the bacteria creating this hazard tin be killed by cooking footing beef to an internal temperature of 160 degrees.
You may detect that flavory. For me, 160 is acceptable in a meat loaf, but only barely; for burgers, rare to medium-rare is my guideline at dwelling and medium my grudging upper limit when I dine out and there's nothing better-looking on the card.
According to CR, this preference places me in the company of 28 per centum of Americans who like ground beef considered past the Centers for Illness Control and Prevention to be "raw or undercooked." Happily, it has non even so placed me in the hospital, every bit it seems to be doing to my beau Americans with ascent frequency:
Patterns of illness
Between 2003 and 2012, at that place were almost eighty outbreaks of East. coli O157 due to tainted beef, sickening 1,144 people, putting 316 in the infirmary, and killing v. Basis beefiness was the source of the majority of those outbreaks. And incidences of food poisoning are vastly underreported.
"For every case of E. coli O157 that we hear about, we guess that another 26 cases actually occur," [CDC epidemiologist Hannah] Gould says. She also reports that beef is the quaternary nigh mutual crusade of salmonella outbreaks — 1 of the most common foodborne illnesses in the U.S. — and for each reported illness caused by that bacteria, an estimated 29 other people are infected.
In its footing beefiness tests, the CR lab looked for five common types of foodborne leaner, including salmonella and seven different variants of Escherichia coli.
(Among these was Eastward. coli O157, which CR says "damages the lining of the intestine, frequently leading to abdominal cramps, bloody diarrhea, vomiting, and in some cases, life-threatening kidney damage." Strain O157:H7 is the strain that led to a Denver producer's call back terminal month of 13.5 tons of ground beef and tenderized steak products, apparently earlier any of it made everyone really ill.)
Rounding out the list were Clostridium perfringens, Enterococcus and Staphylococcus aureus. Fundamental findings:
- All of the samples contained either Enterococcus or a strain of E. coli, which bespeak fecal contamination and can cause infections in the urinary tract or bloodstream.
- Near xx pct of the samples were contaminated with C. perfringens, which CR says is causing a million U.S. cases of food poisoning each yr.
- Ten pct had a strain of S. aureus that tin produce an illness-inducing toxin which even cooking to 160 degreestin can't destroy.
- As for the "superbugs" found in 18 percent of conventional ground beef samples, and 9 percent of the "sustainable" group, those were strains of Southward. aureus or E. coli determined in subsequent CR tests to resist to three or more than classes of antibiotics important to treating infections in people.
· Only i percent of the samples carried salmonella. Simply as CR's director of food rubber and sustainability, Urvashi Rangan, noted, 1 percent multiplied past the four.six billion pounds of ground beef consumed in the U.Southward. last year is "a lot of burgers with the potential to brand you sick." In an average yr, CR says, 1.2 meg people become sick and 450 die from salmonella (that's from all sources, not just ground beef).
Policy and personal recommendations
CR has a number of policy recommendations to offer, starting with reforms in our system of meat production and inspection to eliminate a broad range of unwholesome practices and promote before detections of bug. (These don't go much attention in the magazine article but are covered at length in an accompanying report, which I don't recommend y'all read with a queasy stomach.)
For consumers, though, the options CR offers are limited to one) buying your ground beef from sustainable producers, two) cooking everything to a minimum of 160 degrees, or 3) eating something else entirely.
In support of the start option, CR's total report offers some center-opening guidance to labeling mischief, classifying mutual logos and branding terms into iv categories from "highly meaningful" to "not meaningful" (with beef marked "natural" in the last tier; CR is candidature to ban that usage from the marketplace).
Shifting to sustainable beef is a way to cast your vote for many positive things environmentally likewise as for better personal health, but with just 3 percentage of today'south ground beef coming from such sources, information technology's not clear this can make a big difference someday soon.
As for changes in cooking practice, CR offers 4 tested ways of bringing a burger to 160 degrees while keeping it tasty, including the newly rediscovered and trendy sous vide approach. None of the results looked very appealing to this cook except perchance the ultraslow sous vide, for which I currently lack time, patience and involvement.
Giving up beef for other foods is a expert idea for many reasons, and like Americans more often than not, I've been eating less of it in contempo years. U.S. consumption is down to 50 pounds per capita now, CR reports, and I remember mine is probably half that.
However, the ground beef share of Americans' beef purchases has been climbing – from 42 percent a decade ago to 50 pct now – and CR has shown that to be a less than salubrious trend.
A 4th manner, mayhap
Iii glum alternatives, those, but as I pondered them I striking upon a fourth that I'm surprised CR didn't seem to consider: Grind your ain!
I've done this routinely when making meat loaves of beef/pork/lamb, or trying out fancy chili variations or making artisan sausages, and the fourth dimension/trouble factor is minimal with either a manus-cranked or electric model.
Provided the dwelling house-ground beef is handled carefully and cooked correct away, it should carry no more than contamination risk than the whole cutting(s) it'southward made from. (Here'southward Sunset magazine's take on the question, including a tip on a quick blanching to impale surface germs.)
Depending on the cut you starting time with and how advisedly you trim information technology, the overall quality could be higher and the fat content lower than the best beef you lot tin buy pre-ground. It might even be cheaper.
Anyway, I sent a query near this to CR just haven't heard back yet; if I do, I'll mail service an update. Meanwhile I'grand putting a nice piece of chuck or arm roast on this week's grocery list, along with some skillful buns.
I've bought my final footing beef, people, but that doesn't accept to hateful I've grilled my last burger.
Source: https://www.minnpost.com/earth-journal/2015/08/bacterial-contamination-widespread-ground-beef-consumer-reports-finds/
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