USDA Loophole Means Your Meat Could Be Harboring E. Coli
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles 
on 11.13.07
Image courtesy of the Food Poison Blog
It looks like there may be some reason to the USDA's madness: see, it's just that the agency has deemed it A-OK for meat companies to cook and sell you meat on which E. coli - yup, that's the one - has been found during processing.
Affectionately termed the "E. coli loophole," this little glitch has allowed companies to sell millions of pounds of infected beef to blissfully ignorant consumers each year - provided they add a little "cook only" label. That may help account for why there have been so many incidences of contamination this year.
Yes, the USDA will tell you to thoroughly cook the meat before eating it to destroy all those nasty bacteria but, as some inspectors have noted:
... the "cook only" practice means that higher-than-appropriate levels of E. coli are tolerated in packing plants, raising the chance that clean meat will become contaminated."All the product that is E. coli positive, they put a 'cooking only' tag on it," said one inspector, who like other federal inspectors interviewed asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing their jobs. "They [companies] will test, and everything that's positive, they slap that label on."
"The government keeps putting out that we've reduced E. coli by 50 percent and all of that," said an inspector. "And we haven't done nothing. We've just covered it up."
In other words, any company that finds unacceptably high levels of E. coli in its meat can just slap on the "cook only" label and shift it over to a different line - without saying a peep to the USDA. And we're feeding this stuff to our schoolchildren?
Via :: Chicago Tribune: E. coli loophole cited in recalls (newspaper), ::The Ethicurean: Digest - News: USDA loophole allows E. coli-positive beef to be sold, lots more news (blog)
See also: ::Tainted Meat? USDA Will Tell You. Some Day., ::The Link Between E. Coli in Spinach and Industrial Cattle, ::All On The Table: Cows, Corn, Gasoline, Spinach, E. Coli., and Grass
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My guess is this meat ends up going to restaurants like Burger King and school lunch programs that require temperature testing of products before giving to the customer.
cooked poo is still poo
I've never known anyone to eat raw ground beef (burger tartar?), so this seems specious at best.
What I get from this is that another acronym bites the dust. USDA, EPA, FDA, NIH; they're all shills unworthy of our trust or confidence. You literally take your life in your hands if you listen to these people. They're more into protection of industry than meaningful regulation in the public interest.
One more reason to stay informed and trust yourself first regarding your own interests (like eating without dying).
Maybe this is Reason #12,887 why people should stop eating meat!
Hey John; the real lesson is not to put political hacks that used to lobby for industry interest in charge of the agencies that regulate them,
Sinclair Lewis wrote about this problem many years back, after which FDA and USDA were created and budgeted by Congress to manage the problem. The regulations worked reasonably well to control the hazards over quite a few decades. Until recently, at least, when lobbyists took over our government. That is the problem. It is not intrinsic to the agencies or rules.
Don't buy into the mythologies of the "Small Government Is Always Better" crowd that work day in and day out to convince us that agencies always get it wrong.
If the government is doing bad work we need to make them straighten it out.
Maybe this is Reason #12,887 why people should stop eating meat!
Or not.
Since I found out I had Celiac the husband and I have had a hell of a time finding ground beef products without wheat in them. The solution was to ask the meat cutter at the store to grind up what we want, right there on site.
We eat very rare hamburgers, so it's I am thinking it's a good idea now that this has come out.
(It's weird enough to eat meat after a decade of vegetarianism, but I wanted to get my disease under control before trying to cut meat out again.)
Thank goodness I gave up beef a while back and switched to home grown venison. For safer alternatives you can go to a local butcher and pick up other meats like emu, buffalo, etc. Since the meat is cut up by someone you know rather than a huge corporate meat factory employing underpaid immigrant laborers, there is more incentive for providing healthier meat.
Is this just ground beef, or any kind of meat?
Proper cooking will kill E-coli, that being said- the chances of getting sick from undercooked beef is much higher with ground product than with a steak or roast. ( e coli lives on the outside of the meat - where it is easily killed when cooking, with ground product you have effectively spread the bacteria throughout the meat and given it a huge new surface to grow on).
JL, your point is well made and well taken. Industry hacks hammering at the agencies from within and without has been, shall we say, hardly conducive to the tasks at hand. Some agencies fell to this sooner than others, but I think we can agree that these days it's (federally) endemic.
My own experience is with the EPA; not as an employee but as an environmental professional working in soil & water testing and remediation. You don't want to get me started on that, I'd get booted for both length and content. Suffice it to say they can't find their butts with both hands.
One of two things could help; first, don't have these critical agencies run by appointees, or second, have a way to put the appointers feet to the fire for performance and competence.
Seeing as we can't even get this at FEMA or the Dept. of Justice, hope seems slim.
What's new about this? E. coli is everywhere. I don't really see this as some loophole. If you cook meat like you're supposed to and don't cross-contaminate, you have nothing to worry about.
There are over 10,000,000,000 reasons to go Vegan.
No, I did not pull that out of thin air. Over 10,000,000,000 animals murdered annualy for human use,...in the US alone. Then you have plenty of other reasons. Better environment. Better health. Longer life. So on and so forth.Besides, what with the great cruelty-free substitutes available, I don't see why anyone still eats uses animal products.
Since the day I left off using animal products, I've not had a single bad day, for I am more than satisfied with the knowledge that nothing need die so that I may live. I kill no more forever.
Do us all a favor...Go Vegan...
You can cook it, but you may get E. coli on your cutting board, prep dishes, hands, etc while you prepare it. Gross, and potentially dangerous.
eh, you wanna get scared, go search for what else is living within your meat products!
Everything has bacteria on it, EVERYTHING, its everywhere, its all good!
Eat and be Merry, enjoy your food!
Anonymous, what about the vegetables your killing? you do know they are alive, they breath, you grow, they develop!
Stop getting the plant life!
Hi, I am the USDA. It is ok for your family to eat poison, chemicals, and bacteria. Here have a little E-coli to go along with it.....
By the way the health dept. says it is against the law to grey water recycle in NC. but they can do it because they run the water through chemicals to clean it. Have a nice day.
I agree with Word.
Go Vegan, or at least vegetarian.
It becomes more and more crucial...
To the self-righteous person who proclaims slaughtering animals for meat is "murder" - have you ever eaten any meat at any point in your life? If so, that makes you a murderer.
When are you going to turn yourself in and go to prison for your "crimes"?
The self-righteous vegan cry of "meat is murder" ignores their own hypocrisy of the thousands rodents and ground nesting birds killed during the harvest of wheat, corn, and soybeans that to into their precious Chik'n and Not Dogs.
The underlying problem is not one of consuming meat - anyone recall e. Coli-tainted spinach? - but of our food supply being likened to a factory producing commodity food, where the only metric is price. And the e. Coli levels are escalating now because cows are not designed to live on corn, which promotes stomachy acidity which breed the acid-resistant strains of e. Coli which makes us sick.
The answer? Opt out of factory farming and choose your purveyors based on humane and healthy treatment of meat animals. While such purveyors may not local, many ship frozen products of exceptional quality and health benefits. www.eatwild.com has an extensive listing of such producres.
I've always bought my food the way my mom told me: find a nearby butcher and create a friendly buyer-seller relationship with him.
In short time, he will treat you as a valuable client and pick up the best meat he's got, and prepare it just the way you like it. When buying meat for my burgers, I don't want fat; and that's exactly what I got. On the other hand, prepackaged burgers are made mostly with leftovers, so they are rich in fat, nerves, and preservatives.
While sometimes it's more easy and cheap to just buy the pre-packaged thing, nothing else can replace the careful attention of a trusted person you know. Grandma's advice is so valuable!
By the way, have you noticed how many greener practices are based on our grandparent's ones?
Regarding eating plants - one fact that people forget is that plants can regenerate themselves so in theory you are not actually killing the plant only eating the fruit (produced to be eaten), root (many can regenerate), etc. The big difference being that obviously, when you kill an animal, it does not come back to life or have the ability to regenerate...
Everyone can opt to buy products that promote life and biodiversity like beetroot sugar instead of sugar cane sugar, etc....
Also, cows are not fed corn for the most part...they are actually fed dead chickens, dead pigs, chicken waste, woodchips, their own waste, etc....look it up - it is perfectly legal and allowed by the USDA as well. It is however illegal to feed cows cows since the 90s when mad cow disease came about in the UK. Same with our pets, dogs, cats, etc. getting fed dead cats and dead dogs, etc. in pet food and other products.
The reason why cow meat contains e.coli is because during its processing at meat factories, it comes in contact with feces when the meat is dropped by mistake or cut with unclean tools, etc. due to the speed at which these places operate it has nothing to do with the corn...bacteria doesn't just pop out of nowhere...whatever becomes contaminates has to have had contact with ecoli...
Regarding eating plants - one fact that people forget is that plants can regenerate themselves so in theory you are not actually killing the plant only eating the fruit (produced to be eaten), root (many can regenerate), etc. The big difference being that obviously, when you kill an animal, it does not come back to life or have the ability to regenerate...
Could this be more half-baked? So when I eat corn, the plant is magically regenerating itself over and over again? No, a farmer is planting seeds every year and growing a new crop. Animals "regenerate" as well - they have intercourse and make new little animals.
Also, cows are not fed corn for the most part...they are actually fed dead chickens, dead pigs, chicken waste, woodchips, their own waste, etc...
LOL - that's absurd. You're now saying the massive amounts of corn feed given to cattle are an illusion and the majority of their diet is waste, woodchips, and dead animals?? "Look it up" means you are either embarrassed to link to such silly claims or are simply making it all up.
a good argument for eating wild game or no meat at all! At the very least, buy meat from companies committed to quality and humane and clean conditions!
How do you know that you have E Coli?