Burger time
From the files of "don't eat anything but a salad while you are reading this" comes a new report from
Consumer Reports about bacteria in our ground beef supply.
How safe is your ground beef? they ask. Not anywhere near as safe as you would hope. They tested 458 pounds of ground beef bought from a variety of big box stores, local stores, and natural stores:
The results were sobering. All 458 pounds of beef we examined contained bacteria that signified fecal contamination (enterococcus and/or nontoxin-producing E. coli), which can cause blood or urinary tract infections. Almost 20 percent contained C. perfringens, a bacteria that causes almost 1 million cases of food poisoning annually. Ten percent of the samples had a strain of S. aureus bacteria that can produce a toxin that can make you sick. That toxin can’t be destroyed—even with proper cooking.
Now if you live in a demographic that is knee deep in words like "sustainably farmed" and "organic" your beef stock is considerably safer.
One of the most significant findings of our research is that beef from conventionally raised cows was more likely to have bacteria overall, as well as bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, than beef from sustainably raised cows. We found a type of antibiotic-resistant S. aureus bacteria called MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus), which kills about 11,000 people in the U.S. every year, on three conventional samples (and none on sustainable samples). And 18 percent of conventional beef samples were contaminated with superbugs—the dangerous bacteria that are resistant to three or more classes of antibiotics—compared with just 9 percent of beef from samples that were sustainably produced. “We know that sustainable methods are better for the environment and more humane to animals. But our tests also show that these methods can produce ground beef that poses fewer public health risks,” Rangan says.
[Bold my emphasis.]
The good news is something that many people have known for a long time—sustainable and better, clearly less industrial and cost-effective practices, make for healthier meat. The bad news is something that many people have also known for a long time—we need to change our country's diet so as to not expect red meat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day.