There's A 25% Chance Your Ground Meat Has A Potentially Fatal Bacteria

Mark Bittman has yet another fascinating column in the New York Times, this time on the prevalence of bacteria in meat. He discusses a study that analyzed 80 brands of beef, pork chicken and turkey from five cities. The study found that 47% of the meat contained the bacteria staphylococcus aureus and that 52% were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics. One particular line struck us:

So when you go to the supermarket to buy one of these brands of pre-ground meat products, there's a roughly 25 percent chance you'll consume a potentially fatal bacteria that doesn't respond to commonly prescribed drugs.

Yup, you read that right folks -- based on this study, there is about a one-in-four chance that your ground meat contains a potentially fatal bacteria. Now why is that the case? That's when things get tricky. There has always been problems with giving antibiotics to healthy farm animals, but the practice is widespread nonetheless. In short, antibiotic use on farms can be linked to rising rates of drug-resistant infections.

Now it turns out that the FDA recently decided not to fight against this antibiotic use. So that means that, for the time being, if you use pre-packaged ground beef to make a hamburger, it's probably best to cook the meat through rather than keeping it tastily rare. (Even antibiotic resistant bacteria can be killed by sufficient heat.) Or better yet, grind high-quality meat yourself, or have a reputable butcher grind it right in front of your eyes.

Bittman sums up the problems with this quite succinctly; read his column "Bacteria 1, F.D.A. 0" here.

Comments

[wildisthewind]

10:38 AM on 01/02/2012

Overuse of antibiotics is a very real problem. That said, to blame meat for bacteria in food is just as absurd as blaming vegetables. The largest E.Coli outbreak in history, by far (over 6,000 people) was from bean sprouts. Blaming meat for food poisoning is roughly akin to blaming water for drownings. Yes, we need better practices, but to contort the issue into an anti-meat diatribe is beyond asinine.

[Oginikwe]

10:56 PM on 01/02/2012

E coli comes from manure. Fruits and vegetables that carry e coli have, at some point, met manure or the contents of some animal's digestive tract.

[wildisthewind]

11:43 PM on 01/02/2012

Again, just an argument for better farming practices. Even if you do want to replace all organic agriculture (which means animal inputs) with industrial agriculture, that is not at all sustainable, because it depends on toxic and completely unsustainable petrochemicals.

[elcerritan]

06:49 PM on 01/05/2012

Including, in all probability the contents of some HUMAN's.

[lilipilicious]

12:50 PM on 12/31/2011

Yeah, when you share the planet with billions of other creatures, such things are bound to happen. That doomsday headline is just that. Life is a terminal condition folks. Get over it.

[stape45]

04:12 PM on 01/01/2012

There is such a thing as premature death. There is also such a thing as deregulation. We avoid what we can, then deal with the rest.

[c-tom]

01:07 AM on 12/31/2011

What % of ground meet is actually lethal?

[frank day]

10:18 AM on 12/31/2011

I'd just figure 100% and avoid it all.

[mater]

10:20 AM on 12/31/2011

Extremely important and serious. Thanks!

[c-tom]

09:19 PM on 01/04/2012

And yet the chance your quarter-pounder has a fatal bacteria is something less than
1 in 1,500,000. This is quite a bit lower than the 1 in 1you figure and significantly less that the 1 in 4 the article implies.

[whalepeace]

07:11 PM on 12/30/2011

Another story that makes one so happy to be a vegetarian. Not only does the flesh of rotting corpses not pass our lips, we have less obesity, less cardiovascular disease, less cancer, better health, less depression, and our lives and bodies are not made up of cruelty and the imprisonment and torture of animals.

Vegetarians also do not contribute to the destruction of the planet and the starvation of the Third World, as does the consumption of animal corpses. Eighty percent of the world's grain, which could be feeding people, is going to feed livestock and enhance the profits of animal torturers. The Amazon rainforest is being destroyed to make grazing land for cattle to feed obese flesh-consuming Americans.

"Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." --- Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize 1921

[elcerritan]

12:34 PM on 12/31/2011

Self-congratulatory twaddle and a fake quote from Einstein. Great contribution to the discussion, wp.

[flowereater]

04:39 PM on 01/02/2012

Self-aggrandizing badgering from an industry professional.

[chicgogo]

04:29 PM on 12/31/2011

Listeria in cantaloupes outbreak last year, salmonilia in pine nuts, tainted sprouts and on and on, so you aren't safe just being a vegetarian. In case you didn't know it, humans are omnivores, not herbivores and we've been eating meat since our existence and though I am a huge animal lover and owner, I will continue to eat meat though I do so in moderation and eat vegetarian more. Cycle of life.

[Francois Bergeron]

05:37 PM on 12/30/2011

there a potential chance that 25% of my meat will kill me?
I'll only eat 3 burgers tonite then.

Fun with stats.

[frank day]

10:19 AM on 12/31/2011

Hopefully you don't own a 6 shooter and 5 bullets??

[Francois Bergeron]

12:00 PM on 12/31/2011

fun with stats...

[jotyler]

05:22 PM on 12/30/2011

And there's a 100% chance it was processed with violence and animal cruelty.

[OverseasVet]

02:25 PM on 12/30/2011

staphylococcus aureus is so common that it is on everyone reading this post. If everyone doesn't know that ground beef is a hazardous food if not properly cooked then they should complain to their congressman that the USDA should be headed by a food safety expert rather than a political appointee with no experience. USDA inspectors are veterinarians but the current USDA chief (Secretary of Agriculture) is a politician with a law background. Shouldn't that position be given to someone capable of making decision of food quality?

[threepercent]

01:08 PM on 12/30/2011

Jeez, it's almost as if there was a conspiracy to poison the people and allow 100% federal control over our food and water hmmmm.

[heavywilliams]

09:57 AM on 12/30/2011

If you havn't realized it yet...Cook your food through. Staph aureus is more easily killed than the dreaded E.Coli 0157:H7. E.Coli kills many more people, year -to-year, but the Staph can still make you sick. If irradiation (low dose) were allowed, there would not be the bacterial contamination issues we see today. It's safe, but people freak out when finding out their "food" was nuked for some reason. Food safety would improve dramatically if this practice were allowed. Plus, it would have the benefit longer shelf life. Been in the Microbiology field almost 30 yrs. The biggest problem every year is people eating under-cooked food, period...

[frank day]

10:30 AM on 12/30/2011

Simply don't eat meat.

Problem solved.

[heavywilliams]

10:56 AM on 12/30/2011

Frank, your fooling yourself, raw vegetables harmed thousands of US citizens this year. Listeria, Salmonella, were major players. Everything from Peanut Butter, to Broccoli to Lettuce was affected. You anti-meat people have blinders on. The Salad loving are at greater risk than they think. Vegetables account for more food poisionings a year than meat. Meat get's the most negative media coverage because eating it offends some on the left.

[AUveritas]

11:49 AM on 12/30/2011

We should all eat cantaloupes, right?

[Nukualofa]

09:45 AM on 12/30/2011

Meat is also one of the most socialist government subsidized foods. Corn for cow food is over subsidized. The amount of water used and contaminated is subsidized.

[Tbonepickins]

09:26 AM on 12/30/2011

This is why you should cook your meat...the heat kills bacteria. And, be sure to clean all surfaces used in prep. Not rocket science.

[Harvee Wallbanger]

09:22 AM on 12/30/2011

One question entered my mind and I haven't found the answer to. Why is this only impacting ground beef?

[The Natural]

09:35 AM on 12/30/2011

looks like the study analyzed 80 brands of beef, pork chicken AND turkey from five cities. so it's not just ground beef

[Jason Ballard]

09:40 AM on 12/30/2011

Because the bacteria is on the outside surface of what ever cut of meat your grinding. When you cook it whole even when you cook it very rare you have killed the bacteria on the outside; when you grind it you integrate the bacteria into the center where if cooked rare doesn't get sufficiently high enough temps to kill it.

That is why grinding your own doesn't necessarily solve the problem. Irradiation does.

[OverseasVet]

02:28 PM on 12/30/2011

Irradiatio­n or proper cooking.

[RationalityPlease]

09:12 AM on 12/30/2011

The direct results of de-regulation, the de-fanging and de-funding of our regulatory bodies, and corruption.

Expect much more of this--and much worse--if we continue to allow Big Agra to play with our food supply, force more small farmers out of business, and purchase our corrupt politicians.

[AveragePatriot]

09:23 AM on 12/30/2011

I totally agree!

[amwa]

04:29 PM on 12/30/2011

Yes and I second that.

[stodd31995]

09:04 AM on 12/30/2011

ok, so you need to grind your own or watch the butcher very closely while he or she does it? oh, that's better...not. It will not change a thing and people like you should take your well intentioned study and and maybe work in the industry and learn to understand how its done ie processed. and another thing, there is percentages of bacteria in everything you consume, that's why your body is equipped with an immune system that generally works quite well. If proper temperatures are maintained during the preporation process your fears should melt away, besides there's a 50-50 chance you'll get hit by a bus, so why worry about these made up study percentages. Besides all this, have you ever thought about why prices increase or decrease so radically? well, you can bet when they do you'll find that a "recent study confirmed whatever". I find it hillarious.

[WomenOnGuard]

08:55 AM on 12/30/2011

I try to just eat chicken, turkey, pork and fish. Fish only if it is not farm raised and not from another country.

[mm1970]

12:25 PM on 12/30/2011

pork, turkey, chicken contaminated too