I am a lover of beef. It is rich in minerals and B vitamins. It is a depression buster food. However we haven’t even gotten through the first month of 2008 without a string of hamburger recalls due to the pathogenic bacteria E. coli 0157:H7. January is not even the peak month of E. coli. Look for that in late summer and early fall. All indications, then, are that E. coli 0157:H7 is on the rise and you may get a whole lot more than you bargained for in your burger.
So what in the heck do you do?
Some people reduce their risks by doing what I do – buying a steer from a small rancher and saving it from spending its final days on a feedlot. My steer continued to graze and eat a bit of grain in its last month. With less grain feeding, he would be less likely to have E. coli 0157:H7 in his gut, but he would not be immune to it. He might still have the pathogen in his system and when he was slaughtered and gutted, some of that bacteria may have made it to the carcass. Bacteria from another animal at the meat locker may have made it to my meat as well. You just never know.
I do shoulder some risk and eat medium-well burgers from this particular steer. My gut has withstood other food borne illnesses and my general strategy is to keep my digestion healthy enough to withstand the sorts of challenges it will inevitably face from beef, peanut butter, or spinach.
But just because I am fairly confident that E. coli 0157:H7 will not kill me, I don’t really care to be sick. As much as I like hamburgers, I find myself eating more steaks these days, particularly in restaurants. That’s not such a bad thing. Steaks are pretty good. Because a steak's surface area is cooked (unless of course it's raw), pathogens on the raw meat will be zapped before crossing your lips.
I am a bit more concerned about the younger crowd in the household. While our almost-six year old is quite healthy, I certainly do not want to find out just how well he can fight off a food borne pathogen. Currently, he is not interested at all in burgers and we will keep it that way for a while. He eats no ground beef outside the house and eats it only on occasion at home. With the next steer, he may not consume any of the ground beef at all.
I have put the whole decision about eating ground beef on a “wait and see” basis. I would like to think that I will taste an In and Out burger again someday. However, depending on the reason E. coli 0157:H7 is becoming more prevalent, the fast food burger may be a bad idea. The homemade variety may be a bad idea in the future as well. It’s hard to know.
The industry is scrambling for new technology to fight E. coli 0157:H7. It is working on a vaccine for cattle and for antibacterial agents to use in meat processing. The best new technology is likely a very old one: keep the cattle on pasture and convince Americans that grain-finished beef is a bad idea. Because I doubt that this traditional method of cattle-rearing will be adopted industry-wide and because the vaccine and anti-bacterial solutions may bring their own problems, I see a whole lot more steak-eating in my future.
In February I will be attending the World Ag Expo and I will talk to vendors about the E. coli-busting technologies coming down the pike. For lunch at the Expo, I will order the steak sandwich.
Comments (1)
We buy our beef on the hoof, and it is raised on grass. However, your blog post has me wondering ... can it be contaminated with dangerous strains of e coli once it goes to the slaughterhouse? I know nothing of slaughterhouse procedures. Can you shed some light on this?
Posted by Eileen | February 4, 2008 4:58 AM
Posted on February 4, 2008 04:58