Woman to never walk again. Cargill under multiple suits. Where's the beef?

[L0oniX]

Cargill, whose $116.6 billion in revenues last year made it the country’s largest private company.

<snip> For Ms. Smith, the road ahead is challenging. She is living at her mother’s home in Cold Spring, Minn. She spends a lot of her time in physical therapy, which is being paid for by Cargill in anticipation of a legal claim, according to Mr. Marler. Her kidneys are at high risk of failure. She is struggling to regain some basic life skills and deal with the anger that sometimes envelops her. Despite her determination, doctors say, she will most likely never walk again.

<snip> Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.

<snip> “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 tracing E. coli contamination. He said that while outbreaks had been on the decline, “unfortunately it looks like we are going a bit in the opposite direction.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1



I'll never eat burger again!

[hobbit709]

1. Cook it well done.

E. coli outbreaks have also been traced to assorted veggies, juice and other foods.

[KittyWampus]

3. Nope- E. coli strains will persist on counter tops, plates, utensils etc. Buy steak & grind

yourself, ask store butcher to do it or look for "made from whole meat" on package.

If there was E.coli in your hamburger meat, even if you cook the burger well done and manage to kill it off there, all it takes is one stray cell somewheres in your kitchen.

[hobbit709]

4. No guarantee that butcher is safe.

It takes more than one bacterium, otherwise there would me millions of outbreaks every year all over the country. It's the toxins that some strains produce that are the problem.
Persisting for short periods is not the same as lurking around for months like some other pathogens I can think of.

I for one try not to get fecal matter-either human or animal- on my my kitchen utensils.

[izquierdista]

8. "one stray cell"

Completely wrong. So incredibly wrong that one wonders if you ever took any biology at all.

Bacteria are ubiquitous. We could not function properly if bacteria were absent from our digestive system, and E.coli is among those ubiquitous bacteria.

The difference between sickness and health is due to a variety of virulence factors present in bacteria. Vibrio cholera is a well studied bacteria, whose toxin is the cause of many outbreaks of the cholera disease in humans. Some strains of cholera are potent producers of the toxin and small numbers can cause illness in humans, as is also the case with E. coli. However, these numbers are in the hundreds, maybe even thousands of cells per ml of inoculant. Also, one strain may cause ill effects with hundreds of bacteria per ml, while another, milder strain might require a hundred thousand bacteria to cause the same effect in the host.

Cooking does not remove ALL the bacteria in food unless it involves prolonged time at high temperature. Stir-frying, steaming, and grilling can leave parts of the food at low enough temperature that some bacteria are still viable. The Indian practice of steaming rice in the morning and then letting it sit for the rest of the day has been shown to be a contributory factor in cholera outbreaks. Similarly, poor meat handling practices, such as a lack of disinfection, means that ground beef can already contain infectiously high levels of bacteria.

The symptoms of gastrointestinal illness, vomiting and diarrhea, are the body's attempt to clear bacteria that are at too high a level. The system is never cleared completely, however. Some residual bacteria remain, and the immune system of the host will react to keep the level in check, until the next time that it is overwhelmed by either high numbers, or highly toxic strains of bacteria.

If you want to eat sterile food, you need to put it through an autoclave. Fortunately for us, the body doesn't need sterile food, and things like yogurt, blue cheese, natto, and beer can be beneficial. Food handling and cooking techniques are meant to reduce the amount of harmful bacteria to a level where the body can tolerate them. When you cook rice with water from the Ganges, you need to eat the rice as soon as it is prepared, and not let the residual Vibrio cholera in the pot multiply to harmful levels over the course of a day. When you buy ground beef from a dubious source, it needs to be well done. If you like steak tartare, you need to make sure it comes from a union or kosher slaughterhouse that recently passed inspection.

[KittyWampus]

11. One wonders if you read the article. Apparently you didn't. But your response is typical

of a large number of DU'ers who get off on pretending to know more than they actually do.

FROM THE ARTICLE YOU DIDN'T READ:

Food scientists have registered increasing 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 wash up afterward is not sufficient. A test by The Times found that the safe handling instructions are not enough to prevent the bacteria from spreading in the kitchen.

[Maru Kitteh]

12. The overwhelming majority of E.coli deaths still come from ground beef

Yes outbreaks have been (often mistakenly) traced to vegetable lots but the overwhelming majority of E. coli death and disease attributable to food contamination find their source in a pile of ground up meat.

The abject horror that is the modern American factory slaughterhouse all but guarantees that most ground beef sold in the United States will carry traces of feces within it and therefore, E. coli.

The reason why they have a freakout and remove every green thing from the shelves when 3 bacterium are found on a leaf of salad somewhere is that the vegetable growers do not have the USDA bent over, branded and leashed the way the Meat Industry(TM) does. The meat that kills stays on the market, because it's expected to be contaminated.

USDA
"VERIFICATION OF PROCEDURES FOR CONTROLLING FECAL MATERIAL, INGESTA, AND MILK IN SLAUGHTER OPERATIONS"
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/oppde/rdad/fsisdirectives/6420.2.pdf

If you read it, please note they state their goal is "zero tolerance for visible fecal contamination." VISIBLE. Let me assure you that you do not need to actually have a whole turds worth of feces in or on a product to produce illness. That standard is a complete joke.

[KittyWampus]

2. Just read this. If workers were given more time to do their jobs, this would be easier to contain.

Thus, when meat producers want food irradiation, it has everything to do with being able to keep treating low-paid, over-worked employees on the assembly line and using the irradiation process later on to cover up loathsome business practices.

[L0oniX]

7. Mean while Cargill makes $116.6 billion.

[MineralMan]

5. You can help reduce your risk of these incidents...

Here is a list of ways, in descending order of safety:

1. Buy whole cuts of meat and grind them yourself, making sure the grinder is kept spotlessly clean.
2. Buy whole cuts of meat and have them ground by a good butcher.
3. Buy non-packaged butcher-ground meat from a store. Ask when it was ground.
4. Buy packaged ground meat that is visible and not at its "buy before" date.

Never buy:

1. Frozen, pre-made patties.
2. Chub-packed ground beef.

These two items are made in a factory somewhere, and have been the source of almost all e. coli outbreaks.

Always:

Cook ground beef thoroughly. No rare burgers, except with the first two sources on the list, and you're running a small risk even then.

[hedgehog]

6. It would be interesting to compare the annual rate of side effects from

eating ground beef to side effects from vaccinations.

[stevedeshazer]

9. As Eric Schlosser said, "There's shit in the meat".

[L0oniX]

10. Indeed ...it is shitty beef.

[Bigmack]

13. Ya gotta cook the shit out of it!! ....

Literally.

As one who has taken many large animals apart, I can tell you that only the sloppiest of slaughtering practices splatters shit all over the meat. I mean the sloppiest!

Slaughterhouses are an abomination at best, and the "hurry up" ethos of business today adds to the abomination.

Not blaming the victim, but anybody who eats ground beef these days is crazy.... even at McD's.

Maybe in spaghetti sauce... simmered for a long time, but even at it's best, you have to remember that stuff is not meat.... it's slaughterhouse waste.

[L0oniX]

14. There's a reason that the ass is at the other end from the mouth.