Consumers need to know the rules of meat safety

Tracey Williams is used to her friends' questions about food safety: The recent MBA graduate from Southern Methodist University also sports a master's degree in meat science from Texas A&M.

Recent alarming reports about the safety of ground beef have made the questions even more timely.

Williams' bottom line: "I think the average consumer just needs to know how to properly prepare meat," she said. "And I think most people don't follow all the steps."

Even so, she buys her burger meat in a store where she knows it's ground fresh daily from sources she can identify – which can be impossible to do with most commercially prepared hamburger.

Choosing their stores and reading their labels carefully is a first step for shoppers worried about what goes into their ground beef. Williams and other meat experts say the consumer's last – and always effective – line of defense is a food thermometer and a spray bottle of kitchen cleaner.

The main risk posed by ground beef is the bacteria E. coli. A recent New York Times story highlighted one woman's suffering from a hamburger-borne infection and potential gaps in the chain of monitoring the safety of processed ground beef.

E. coli is an all-but unavoidable microbe found in many animals and inside most people. Most strains are harmless, or even beneficial. The strain called O157:H7 creates a chemical that is intensely poisonous to people.

That strain is one of several that make people sick and are sometimes found in meat or on raw vegetables. The Dallas County Heath Department recorded 29 E. coli illnesses last year and 13 this year, but the statistics do not reflect the source of the infection.

In most cases, people recover from the illness. But the Times story recounted the case of a woman whose infection left her paralyzed from the waist down. Her contaminated burger came from a company that mixes meats from many sources into its ground beef.

That's a common industry practice, used for most of the hamburger found on local food shelves. That means food safety depends on the care taken at multiple locations – in several states and countries.

The Dallas morning news For example, it's perfectly legal for meat processors to blend cheap, lean pieces of meat with fat that has been extracted from slaughterhouse trimmings that have been frozen, pressed, cooked, separated and treated with ammonia.

But the system is not necessarily more dangerous than more narrowly controlled hamburger production, said Daniel Hale, a professor of meat science at Texas A&M University. Ground beef is tested by meat processors, commercial suppliers, and even by some retailers, he said. And while that system may need strengthening, it cannot guarantee that any particular hamburger will be free of E. coli.

"You can't test your way out of this problem," Hale said. "You cannot eliminate E coli from the system. You are still going to have to cook it to kill it."

E. coli can be found in cows' intestines and feces. During the slaughtering process,despite efforts to prevent it, somemicrobes can find their way onto thesurface of meat.Grinding can work these microbes deep into the mixture. Other steps in the industrial hamburger-making process offer other opportunities for contamination, if proper procedures aren't followed. Basic cuts of meat such as briskets or steaks are something like lumber, chopped directly from the source. Most ground beef is more like plywood, an engineered product created to meet specific consumer goals of standardized taste, fat content, shelf-life and price.

And while spot checks are done for bacteria at various stages of the process, even industry officials acknowledge that some people still get sick, even as beef producers have spent millions of dollars on research and testing. Health officials say there are about 24,000 known cases of meat related E coli related illness per year, with many more minor cases going undiagnosed. The known cases represent one illness for every 1.1 million pounds of beef produced in the United States.

That's a pretty good record, beef producers say. And while they stress the need for consumers to do their part, they acknowledge the need to produce uncontaminated meat.

"We can't say the consumer bears all the responsibility for safe product," said Russell Woodward a senior manager for the Texas Beef Council. "That's irresponsible."