Hope You Didn’t Eat Meatloaf this Week..

If you ate ground beef this week, don’t read this post. I wouldn’t want to upset you by discussing the 2 MAJOR ground beef recalls in the last week due to possible E.coli contamination.

1. 2 people died and 28 others became seriously ill after consuming ground beef infected with E.coli that originated from Fairbank Farms in NY. To look for possible tainted products in your home, there’s a long laundry list of labels under which the tainted beef could have been sold under including B.J.’s Wholesale Club, Trader Joe’s, ACME and Shaw’s Supermarkets, Giant Food Stores and Martin’s Food Markets (among many others) in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states.

Food Lion, a popular chain in the Midlands, is recalling their ground beef as well. Have no fear, your favorite local Walmart and Piggly Wigly do NOT carry ground beef products under this label.

2. Valley Meats LLC of Coal Valley, Ohio is recalling 96,000 pounds of ground beef products that was sold under brand names including Grillmaster, J&B and Thick ‘N Savory.

If you’ve possibly consumed ground beef that falls under the above categories, look out for the typical warning signs of E.coli poisoning: watery/bloody diarrhea, severe abdominal pain, mild fever, dehydration, and kidney failure. Other than the kidney failure, you pretty much can’t tell if you became ill from E.coli poisoning or the Nexium-Paxil-Viagra cocktail you drink for breakfast.

E.Coli—It’s What’s For Dinner

The game of food safety is a risky balance of luck and knowledge. Unfortunately, it takes many years of large-scale contaminations and tragic deaths/illnesses to get the proper regulation ball rolling.

Prohibition of the sale of E.coli tainted meat started after 4 children died in 1994 from contaminated burgers from Jack in the Box. I couldn’t even conjure up a creative idea as to why tainted meat was approved for sale before then.

An article in the NY Times chronicles a 22-year-old dancer teacher’s E.coli contamination from a backyard BBQ hamburger patty, causing seizures, a coma, and ultimately paralysis from the waist down, and ties it into the government’s lax beef inspection policies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=e.%20coli&st=cse

The most common food you can catch E.coli from: ground beef. And it’s not just a cut of meat from one cow run through a grinder. That savory beef patty is actually made up of different grades of meat, different parts of the cow, even different slaughterhouses and up to 30% fat trimmings, according to USDA standards.

Combining different sources into a clump—surprise, surprise—saves money. In fact, Cargill, the food giant responsible for the contaminated hamburger patty that poisoned the woman above, cut costs by 25% with this practice.

The lower grade cuts of meat are more likely to have been in contact with feces, a popular hangout spot for E.coli. Most meat companies rely on the slaughterhouses to test the meat and only test it themselves after the beef is ground up together.

The USDA, using a healthy dose of logic, prefers meat companies test the separate meats first before combining, so that any contaminated meat can be targeted more efficiently. But apparently handshake agreements with some meat companies allow slaughterhouses to sell various cuts of meat only if the grinder agrees not to test it for E.coli.

Since waiting around for social responsibility on the parts of the slaughterhouses and the meat companies could take longer than the 2^nd Ave Subway construction, the best way to ensure you kill off any possible lingering bacteria, whether already present in the product or contaminated after purchase, is to cook the ground beef until the center temperature is 160F. And a brown center doesn’t mean the temperature reached 160F so use a thermometer to be sure.

Now you know! And knowing is half the battle.

One, Two, Three Year’s A Charm

Seems 3 is the magic number for the FDA. That’s how many years it took the FDA to read noted from their federal advisers, taking a cue from a 2006 report from the Institute of Medicine (note: 2009 – 2006 = 3 years ago), told the FDA that they have been doing an awful job of letting the public know about potentially dangerous foods and drugs.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33093771/ns/health-more_health_news/

Sarcasm aside, complete overhauls do take time and reforming the public’s communication with an organization as critical to our daily health and well-being as the FDA is a positive step. For the most part, we have seen the FDA step up this year with notifying the public about contaminated food products and penalizing the companies for their carelessness.

Another plus is the boost in videos and web-based materials that educate the public on safe food practices. After all of my criticisms, I have to give the FDA a gold star for this.

Nestle Continues On Road To Notoriety

The Nestle Toll House cookie dough E.coli outbreak has sadly been confirmed by the FDA. But they still don’t know where the E.coli came from. The commissioner said that no E.coli was found inside the factory or on the processing equipment.

“Health officials are still believed to be baffled as to how a bacterium that is found in cattle intestines ended up in cookie dough, which is usually considered to be more at risk from salmonella as this can occur in raw eggs.”

Still, they think it’s an ingredient. I beg to differ.

Dr. Lina’s educated guess at to how this contamination occurred? Lax cleanliness practices by the workers a.k.a. not washing their hands after using the bathroom. E.coli likes to make a living in fecal matter, none of the ingredients in the dough are preferred breeding grounds for E.coli, and fecal contamination is one of the most popular forms of food contamination.

CNN reported that 72 were infected with the O157:H7 strain of E.coli in 30 states, 34 were hospitalized, 10 with hemolytic uremic syndrome.

71% of those infected were women.. Clearly some kind of sick joke to get women to stop our gluttonous gorging on all that is fatty and sugary.

Nestle Seeks Limelight—Decides to Hop on the Recall Bandwagon

Remember those moist, rich Nestle Toll House cookies you used to make with mom as a kid or with your college roommates during finals week? How many of you loved licking the raw cookie dough right out of the bowl at the end?

Hope the E. coli didn’t spoil the taste for you though. Apparently it did for the FDA and Nestle decided to recall it:

“[Nestle USA] recalled 46 of its refrigerated cookie dough products as a precautionary measure after.. The FDA confirmed that 66 cases across 28 states had been reported since March 2009.”

Nestle’s defense is that all packages advise against consuming cookie dough before cooking. Thanks for the heads up, Nestle, that still doesn’t excuse decades of eating your raw cookie dough all over the world and never having to recall it due to illness until now—mysteriously.

How did E. coli O157:H7, more commonly found in raw hamburger meat, end up in cookie dough? I’d give Nestle the benefit of the doubt that his had nothing to do with negligence or desire to cut corners to save money but given that they just “temporarily laid off” (read: fired) 200+ people, I’m going to go ahead and throw them into the ConAgra bin of complete disregard for social responsibility.