For the third year in a row, ground beef tainted with Salmonella has caused a multi-state food poisoning outbreak. At least 16 people in five states have developed Salmonella infections after eating tainted ground beef, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Friday. Seven of these people became so sick they needed to be hospitalized. Last year, 46 people in nine states were part of a ground beef Salmonella outbreak, 12 of those people required hospitalization. And in 2011, eight of the 20 people sickened in a seven-state outbreak were hospitalized.
By these accounts, and many other reports of single-state outbreaks, it’s clear that Salmonella in ground beef is a serious public health threat. So why is it legal to sell raw beef that’s contaminated with Salmonella?
The US Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA FSIS) is the federal agency charged with ensuring the safety of meat, poultry and eggs. Under federal law, it is illegal to sell meat that is “adulterated.” But there are only a handful of food/pathogen combinations that meet this criteria. For ground beef, the only adulterant defined by law is E.coli. That means it’s legal to sell raw ground beef that is tainted with Salmonella -until someone gets sick. To food safety advocates, this doesn’t make much sense.
“It is long overdue to consider Salmonella in ground beef as an adulterant under the law,” said Fred Pritzker, a food safety attorney with Pritzker Hageman, a law firm that represents food poisoning victims. “Time and time again, we have seen these outbreaks related to beef contamination. That should not happen. We need to be doing more to prevent these illnesses in the first place. This should be a wakeup call for the policy makers at FSIS.”
It’s really a simple solution, but it won’t happen. Slow down the kill line. When you have butchers in the slaughter house using air powered chain saws and chain mail on to protect themselves. the bosses tell them to hurry even faster. That’s when the chainsaws puncture the guts and get manure and the e-coli on the meat. They don’t get it off the small bits of meat that becomes hamburger. The only solution is to make certain to cook that hamburger thoroughly. Bon Appitit!
What’s the big deal? Oh some people got sick, so what. They obviously weren’t capitalists. Who cares if someone gets sick as long as there is profit.