Tag Archives: Beef

Japan blames Australia for E. coli O157, which occurs naturally

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The blame game never ends.

It’s like getting divorced.

The Gyukaku restaurant chain in Japan, without offering any credible information about the microbial food safety steps it takes, has decided to blame Australian beef for an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak which sickened 20 of its customers at the Korean-style barbecue restaurant in Japan.

Maybe the owners should ask themselves, why are they serving raw beef?

Of the 20 people who became sick in Toyama prefecture, 15 were infected with the O157 strain of E. coli bacteria after eating at an outlet of the popular Gyukaku restaurant chain on May 6, local officials said yesterday.

The company said it had changed its Australian supplier, but a public health inspection of the affected restaurant did not find E. coli bacteria.

At least four people in Japan have died from E. coli O111 bacteria food poisoning since April after eating raw beef at a different low-price Korean-style barbecue restaurant chain.

It’s not the lower price. Cook cows. Fire invented for reason.
 

Specialty meat not safer

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The number one health concern with meat is making sure it’s cooked enough to kill dangerous bacteria, which is something both conventionally and organically produced meats have.

So says Dr. Dana Hanson, a meat specialist in North Carolina State University’s Food Science Department in a piece for WRAL (see below).

“The end result is a healthy food product in either scenario. To say that one is better or more healthy than the other is, quite frankly, a stretch.”

There are also debates about animal treatment, environmental concerns and how antibiotics may impact bacteria strains. But those debates are separate from the nutrition and safety of the meat we ultimately eat.

Those comments were markedly different than those from producers of specialty meats

Ritchie Roberts of Double R Cattle Services Farm near Hillsborough said,

“I know that my beef is all grass-fed and handled correctly and is super good and nutritious for you ’cause I know what goes into it. and I have control of that. It boils down to that sense of being able to support maybe a local industry and that’s really where the benefits of organic come in.”

Draft owner Dean Ogan says, “The most important thing for us is to know where it came from, know who produced it, know the process.”

All worthy objectives — that have nothing to do with safety.
 

Police investigation on E. coli deaths in Japan; still missing the point about risks of raw beef

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In another example of Japan’s rapid response to food safety issues, the health ministry says it plans to begin imposing new penalties for food safety violations as early as October … as current guidelines are nonbinding.

The agriculture ministry urged restaurants to ensure the trimming of all raw meat and to remind customers of the higher risks of food poisoning for children and the elderly.

Foods Forus Co., operator of the Yakiniku-zakaya Ebisu restaurant chain — four customers of which died after eating raw beef dishes at its outlets — admitted Tuesday to having taken a lax attitude toward food safety and that it had stopped trimming meat to remove surface bacteria at its restaurants since July 2009, despite being aware of government guidelines to do so.

”We thought the meat had already been trimmed (at Yamatoya Shoten) and that it was alright” to skip the step at the restaurants, a Foods Forus executive told Kyodo News. ”We were careless regarding food safety.”

Police have questioned the president of Tokyo-based meat supplier Yamatoya Shoten and The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned Yamatoya sold meat it claimed was wagyu to Yakiniku-zakaya Ebisu but the meat also contained other kinds of beef.

Wagyu comes from native Japanese breeds of beef cattle, such as Japanese Black, Japanese Brown, Japanese Polled and Japanese Shorthorn, or crosses of such breeds.

However, the ID number of the carcass from which the beef in question was taken showed the animal was raised by a dairy farmer in Fukushima Prefecture.
According to the farmer, "If the meat was sold as wagyu beef, it’s fraudulent labeling."

Yamatoya Shoten removed bones and fat from the meat, divided it into small portions, sterilized it with alcohol and sealed it in vacuum packs, according to the sources. It was then shipped directly to Yakiniku-zakaya Ebisu outlets, they said.

The police said they plan to investigate the processes used in distributing the meat and whether proper hygiene was maintained.
 

Excuse me, while I kiss the pavement; gestures won’t get rid of E. coli O111 in raw beef

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Yasuhiro Kanzaka, president of Japanese barbecue restaurant chain Yakiniku-zakaya Ebisu fell on his sword and kissed the pavement at the company’s headquarters in Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture on May 5, 2011.

This is of little comfort to the four dead and 70 sick from E. coli O111 in raw beef served at the restaurants which was never tested because, “We never had a positive result, so we assumed our meat would always be bacteria-free.”

In a supreme case of reactive rather than proactive food safety policy, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said it will introduce stricter standards for the handling of raw meat and penalties for violators.

The ministry aims to quickly establish the standards in line with the Food Sanitation Law, and will seek advice from a food safety panel and other concerned bodies, ministry officials said Thursday.

Here’s the advice: don’t serve raw hamburger.

Oh, and authorities on Friday afternoon raided the corporate headquarters of Yakiniku-zakaya Ebisu and a wholesale distributor connected to the outbreak. They probably have those bacteria-vision googles.

At least 20 of the 70 sick are in critical condition.
 

Nosestretcher alert: Grass-fed beef not free from E. coli O157

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Food porn is everywhere – and can be bad for public health.

ABC2 in Baltimore, Maryland ran a piece yesterday about a “quick, easy and healthy meal that won’t break the bank” and quoted certified nutritionist and personal trainer, Christi Christiaens, as saying “grass fed beef strongly reduces and sometimes eliminates the growth of harmful bacteria, like E-coli.”

No it doesn’t.
 

Market food safety rather than fear

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Coles Supermarkets is an Australian supermarket chain owned by Wesfarmers. It has 742 stores nationally and more than 93,000 employees. Coles currently has the second-largest market share behind Woolworths Supermarkets.

Coles is now using celebrity chef thingy Curtis Stone to push its ‘No Bull’ campaign, which proclaims all beef sold at Coles is free of hormone growth promotants, or HGPs – supplements of naturally occurring hormones that reduce farming costs because they cause cattle to produce more beef from less feed.

Similar marketing claims have made by Whole Foods and Chipotle in the U.S., both which suck at food safety. Tyson tried it with antimicrobials and was told by a judge to stop because of the bull involved.

Meat and Livestock Australia, which acts on behalf of 47,000 meat producers, said Coles’ marketing strategy could frighten consumers into thinking beef from cattle raised on growth-promoting hormones was unsafe, despite years of scientific testing showing it posed no risk.

The group told The Sunday Age it was too early to tell if customers had stopped buying beef from retailers other than Coles, but if the industry was forced to stop using hormones due to unwarranted fear, ramifications could be widespread.

Victorian Farmers Federation president Andrew Broad said, “They’re creating a monster in the mind of consumers that this is bad … when the reality is there are no health risks with HGPs. The campaign implies that there’s some chemical being pumped into the beef, which is just a nonsense.”

Never go with the no-risk message. There are always risks, but these are miniscule compared with the risks of dangerous microorganisms associated with beef. I’m still waiting for someone to step up and market microbial food safety – so there’s fewer sick people out there.

Simon Berger of Woolworths, rightly dismissed the campaign as “a supermarket gimmick that will be bad for the environment and bad for Australian farmers,” and that it would not follow Coles’ hucksterism.

“We have absolute confidence in the Australian beef industry … We have no plans to dictate to them how it’s produced. Removing technology means you need more cattle, eating more food, on more land, producing more methane over more time to produce the same beef. Someone will pay for that – either farmers or customers, as well as the environment.”

Coles spokesman Jim Cooper defended the campaign, and stressed that Coles wasn’t saying HGP-raised beef was unsafe, it was saying that HGP-free beef was of a higher quality and tasted better, adding, “We are doing what we need to do to improve the quality of beef we sell to customers and that’s all this is about for us.”

But nothing to improve the microbial safety of beef Coles sells to consumers.

CSIRO Professor Alan Bell confirmed there was no proof that HGPs in beef posed a health threat to consumers. But a recent CSIRO study, published in the journal Animal Production Science, supports Coles’ assertion that HGP-free beef is more tender. The study found the hormones had a ”negative influence” on tenderness, taste and quality.

HGPs have been used in Australia since 1979, and about 40 per cent of cattle are now implanted with slow-release HGPs, which add an estimated $210 million in production gains to the Australian beef industry each year.

The group said the amount of hormones found in HGP-raised beef was far lower than the level of hormones naturally occurring in many foods. One egg contained about the same amount of estrogen as 77 kilograms of beef.
 

Food safety silliness from Fox

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Fox News does lots of dumb things. Reprinting food safety nosestretchers from askmen.com is a public health liability.

Among the top 10 food safety tips – which are primarily lifestyle choices, not food safety – is that people should avoid buying ground beef at Whole Foods “unless you watch them grind it.”

Whole Foods sucks at food safety, but how the writer got groovy E. coli goggles to see bacteria beyond the horoscope-level of superstition is worthy of scientific investigation.
 

Stricter testing for federal ground beef program may not lead to safer meat

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About a year ago, the USA Today ran a series of stories about the microbial safety of food served in the U.S. school lunch program, stating,

“McDonald’s, Burger King and Costco, for instance, are far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens. They test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the USDA tests beef made for schools during a typical production day. And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to 10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef.”?

That caused a stir at the time, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture commissioned a report from the National Research Council, which formed a Committee on an Evaluation of the Food Safety Requirements of the Federal Purchase Ground Beef Program, chaired by Gary Acuff of Texas A&M University.

Today, the committee concluded in their published report (it’s not on-line yet) there is, “no scientific basis that more stringent testing of meat purchased through the government’s ground beef purchase program and distributed to various federal food and nutrition programs — including the National School Lunch Program — would lead to safer meat."

In its assessment of AMS’s ground beef purchase program, the committee that wrote the report said validated cooking processes provide greater assurance of ground beef’s safety than would additional testing for pathogens. Testing alone cannot guarantee the complete absence of pathogens because of statistical implications associated with how beef is sampled during testing.

The committee’s analysis of the number of illnesses since 1998 linked with AMS ground beef provided to schools suggests that outbreaks were rare events before AMS requirements became more stringent in February, implying that controls already in place were appropriate for protecting public health. For instance, no recorded outbreaks of E. coli or salmonella associated with AMS ground beef have occurred in more than a decade. Prevention of future outbreaks will depend on eliminating contamination during production and ensuring meat is properly handled, stored, and cooked before it is served, the committee emphasized.

As part of its review, the committee also attempted to compare the AMS specifications with those of large industry purchasers of ground beef. Among purchasers, the committee found considerable differences in testing and safety standards and suspected that the intended use of the ground beef could account for the variations. For example, all raw AMS ground beef is distributed in frozen form, but distributors of fresh meat products may require different standards designed to improve shelf life. While AMS safety requirements appear comparable to or more demanding than those of commercial companies on the surface, the lack of information detailing the science used for corporate specifications prevented the committee from making direct comparisons.

"The report encourages AMS to strengthen its established specifications and requirements for ground beef by utilizing a transparent and clearly defined science-based process," said Gary Acuff, chair of the committee and professor and director of the Center for Food Safety at Texas A&M University, College Station.

In addition, the report says that some of the requirements were founded on expert opinion and industry practices where the scientific basis was unclear. The committee recommended that AMS base their requirements on standards supported by the International Commission on Microbiological Safety of Foods, the Codex Alimentarius Commission, and the Research Council report An Evaluation of the Role of Microbiological Criteria for Foods and Food Ingredients. It also suggested that AMS analyze data from the suppliers’ bacterial testing to evaluate the safety requirements over time and use statistical methods to set testing sample and lot sizes. Overall, AMS should develop a systematic, transparent, and auditable system for modifying, reviewing, updating, and justifying purchasing specifications.
 

Mother of E. coli victim prepares for inquest in Wales

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Sharon Mills has waited over five years to tell a coroner how her 5-year-old son spent his final days dying from E. coli O157.

The long-awaited inquest into the death of E.coli victim Mason Jones is due to begin in front of Gwent coroner David Bowen, in Newport.

Wales Online reports Mason died on October 4, 2005, at Bristol Children’s Hospital, around two weeks after contracting the food poisoning bug. He was one of 158 victims, most of them children, struck down by the O157 strain.

The start of the inquest has been delayed to allow the completion of the South Wales Police investigation into Mason’s death, the prosecution of Bridgend butcher William Tudor under food hygiene laws and to allow E.coli expert Professor Hugh Pennington to conduct a public inquiry.

His report, which laid the blame for the outbreak firmly on the shoulders of Tudor but also identified serious failings in local authority inspection and procurement procedures, will form part of the evidence that Mr Bowen will consider before giving his verdict.

Ms. Mills, 36, from Deri, near Bargoed, said,

“This is what we have been waiting for for five years. I just hope that justice prevails. … The feeling that I need to get justice has taken over my life over the last five years and the end is near now and I am scared that we are not going to get the outcome that Mason deserves. I’m just hoping that I find the strength from somewhere to get through the next couple of days. I have experienced the worst thing I can ever experience, but having to deal with the inquest comes second. The hurt never goes away when you lose a child. You never get over it – you learn to live alongside it.”

Sick in French salmonella outbreak tops 100

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Over 100 school kids (and a few adults) have been confirmed sick by salmonella in ground beef patties in Poitiers, France.

The source of original contamination has not been uncovered.

So far cases are limited to the Department of Vienne. Health authorities sent out a national alert but the school holidays hampered the investigation. It was an ER doctor in Poitiers who sent out the alert after seeing 8 patients arrive in the University Hospital with the same symptoms and from the same school. At that point they started a "regional cell of sanitary surveillance.” (Amy’s not sure on that translation).

Thanks to Albert Amgar for forwarding the story.