On Christmas Eve, 2009, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced some 248,000 pounds of tenderized beef were being recalled and was eventually linked to 21 E. coli O157:H7 infections in 16 states.

Needle or blade tenderized beef is typically used on tougher cuts of beef or pork to break down muscle fibers or to inject marinade into meat. About 50 million pounds of needle- or blade-tenderized meat is produced in the U.S. each month, according to a federal study, but it’s not required to be labeled.

All hamburger should be cooked to a thermometer-verified 160F because it’s all ground up – the outside, which can be laden with poop, is on the inside. With steaks, the thought has been that searing on the outside will take care of any poop bugs like E. coli and the inside is clean. But what if needles pushed the E. coli on the outside of the steak to the inside?

Luchansky et al. wrote in the July 2009 Journal of Food Protection that based on inoculation studies, cooking on a commercial gas grill is effective at eliminating relatively low levels of the pathogen that may be distributed throughout a blade-tenderized steak. But others recommend such meat be labeled because it may require a higher cooking temperature.

JoNel Aleccia of msnbc writes the recall of more than a ton of beef potentially contaminated with dangerous E. coli bacteria — including mechanically tenderized sirloin steaks — is renewing calls for better labeling.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service officials said the Town & Country Foods meat was shipped from April 4 to April 10 and included hamburger patties, stewing beef and sirloin fillets. The problem was discovered when company lab tests confirmed E. coli O157:H7 after the meat already had gone out, resulting in the recall.

Meat industry officials and even a former federal agriculture leader say they’re not convinced of the risk of illness — or that it’s worth slapping a label on every package, possibly discouraging consumption, and that reported illnesses associated with tenderized meat have been very small compared to the volume of product.