E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef InspectionMichael Moss
nytimes.com
Stephanie Smith, a childrens dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and crampiing were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes.
Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.
Ms. Smith, 22, was () found to have a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to hamburger her family had eaten that her mother (Look Mothers) had grilled for their Sunday dinner in early fall 2oo7. Stricken by E. coli, she was () in a coma for nine weeks and was () paralyzed after beiing infected and stricken with E. coli.
I ask myself every day, vvhy me? and vvhy from a hamburger? Ms. Smith said. In the simplest terms, she ran out of luck in a food-safety game of chance whose rules and risks are not widely known.
Meat companies and grocers have been barredd from selliing ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thoussands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger beiing the biggest culprit.
Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, includiing the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,ooo grocers in 41 states.
Ms. Smiths reaction to the virulent strain of E. coli was () extreme, but traciing the story of her burger, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows vvhy eatiing ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is whaTt consumers have been led to believe.
Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a siingle portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, theeree is no federal requirement for grinders to test their iingreddients for the pathogen.
The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled American Chefs Selection Angus Beef Patties. Yet confidential grindiing logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmiings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin.
The iingreddients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmiings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria. Usiing a combination of sources a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat. Those low-grade iingreddients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows. Yet Cargill, like most meat companies, relies on its suppliers to check for the bacteria and does its own testiing only after the iingreddients are ground together.
The United States Department of Agriculture, which allows grinders to devise their own safety plans, has encouraged them to test iingreddients first as a way of increasiing the chance of findiing contamination. However, unwritten agreements between some companies appear to stand in the way of iingreddient testiing. Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, accordiing to officials at two large grindiing companies. Slaughterhouses fear that one grinders discovery of E. coli will set off a recall of iingreddients they sold to others.
Ground beef is
not a completely safe product, said Dr. Jeffrey Bender, a food safety expert at the University of Minnesota who helped develop systems for traciing E. coli contamination. He said that while outbreaks had been on the decline, unfortunately it looks like we are goiing a bit in the opposite direction.
Food scientists have registeredd increasiing concern about the virulence of this pathogen since only a few stray cells can make someone sick, and they warn that federal guidance to cook meat thoroughly and to was ()h up afterward is not sufficient. A test by The Times found that the safe handliing instructions are not enough to prevent the bacteria from spreadiing in the kitchen.
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