THOSE OTHER BACTERIA IN YOUR MEAT AND POULTRY

On the whole, the meat-eating public in America seems to have taken the recent bad news rather well - that there is likely to be dangerous Staph bacteria in about half of the meat or poultry they buy. Although, I did notice more buyers at the fish than the meat counter today at my favorite store. Maybe just my imagination. (By the way, I bought fish for dinner - wild, not farmed and it was delicious).

But everyone seems to be forgetting all the other studies of bacteria in U.S. meat and poultry and acting as though this was the first time disease-causing bacteria - or, Staph, had been found. Such other research has usually concluded that the large majority of U.S. meat carries at least some disease-causing bacteria. And naturally, the industry has always questioned the findings - just as the American Meat Institute did this month.

For instance, take the study by Consumer Reports of bacteria in chicken in late 2006. The methodology used seems to be very similar to the most recently reported one: taking samples of raw poultry sold in stores. Except this study was larger and covered 23 states. It concluded that 83 percent of the 525 chickens it tested were infected with Salmonella enteritidis, Campylobacter jejeuni, Listeria monocytogenes - or, Staphylococcus aureus (the recent headliner) bacteria.

In other words, bacteria in your meat or poultry is nothing new. Some of these bacteria - or their toxins - are much more resistant to freezing and heat than others. To my mind, what was most frightening about the recent study's findings is not the percentage of meat found to contain Staph, but that such a high percentage of the Staph - which can produce toxins that aren't affected by cooking - are resistant to many antibiotics.

TSF

WILL COOKING MEAT PREVENT STAPH FOOD POISONING?

The American Meat Institute (AMI) obviously didn't like that study I mentioned in yesterday's post - the one that found that about half of America's meat was carrying Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, and about half of those bacteria in U.S. meat and poultry were resistant to several groups of antibiotics. Bad news all round for the industry, and not the kind that gets you more meat eaters, or increases profits of meat producers.

Naturally, the AMI immediately tried to both discredit the study and to reassure consumers. They said that the sample size used in the research study was too small. I agree, it was small, but even if the numbers of bacteria are a bit lower, they are still pretty unpleasant. To comfort its meat-eating public, the AMI said not to worry, because while the Staph bacteria that the study found were antibiotic-resistant, they were not heat-resistant, and could be killed by cooking your lunch or dinner to an appropriate temperature. Several other news releases on the topic have more or less said the same thing: "cook your meat well and you have nothing to worry about."

Not true. Let me explain why. Staphylococcus aureus can enter open wounds (even cuts so tiny that they are invisible) of people preparing the meat and cause dangerous infections - especially if the staph is one of the MRSA kind(the most antibiotic resistant, which two of my friends are struggling with).

As for staphylococcus food poisoning, some news for you people at AFI - and you should have known this: It is not the bacteria themselves that cause the illness. It is the enterotoxins they produce (including Staphylococcal enterotoxin A,B,C,D, and E). These toxins are fairly heat and freezing resistant. They can survive in your frozen burgers for as long as a year (if you keep them that long, which I wouldn't advise). As for being inactivated during cooking - the bacteria can be killed, but these toxins can survive and still make you ill after several minutes of cooking your meat at high temperatures.

So why isn't Staphylococcus aureus a more common cause of food poisoning?

Read the next post.

TSF