Restaurants May be Involved in Possible Steak E. coli Outbreak
In the first published epidemiological report on an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak associated with steak products, the authors warned that restaurants should be warned about the increased risk of E. coli infection from undercooked steaks previously tenderized with blades and injections of brine or marinade.
That excellent advice came in 2005 when Minnesota public health investigators wrote about 12 confirmed cases of E. coli O157:H7 from non-intact, blade-tenderized frozen steaks that had been sold by door-to-door vendors in Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, North Dakota and Kansas. Three of the victims were hospitalized, including a 52-year-old patient who was treated for 25 days after developing hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), and was discharged with “residual neurological deficits.”
Four years later and our national food safety law firm, Pritzker Olsen Attorneys, is investigating a possible steak E. coli outbreak associated with at least one large United States restaurant chain. Nothing official has come out as of yet, but we have been contacted by E. coli O157:H7 survivors who may have been infected by meat injected by tenderizing ingredients. The outbreak is believed to have reached multiple states.
These injections and other mechanical tenderizing techniques may enhance flavor but can be dangerous to consumers when brine is contaminated and when meat isn’t cooked well. Even some restaurant cooks may mistakenly believe that all steaks can be safely served rare in the middle. That’s true with intact, untouched steaks because any bacteria is on the surface and is easily killed.
But when steaks are tenderized with brine or mechanical blading, the processes can drive pathogens into the center of the meat, like hamburger. In those cases, an instant-read themometer should be used to ensure proper cooking.
Here’s what the 2005 report said: ” These processing methods create new challenges for prevention of O157 infections. Food regulatory officials should re-evaluate safety issues presented by nonintact steak products, such as microbiologic hazards of processing methods, possible labeling to distinguish intact from non-intact steaks and education of the public and commercial food estabshments on the increased risk associated with undercooked nonintact steaks.”
Color of Ground Beef Not an Indicator of Safe Food
In the current Fairbank Farms E. coli outbreak, at least 25 persons in 10 states have been infected with the same strains of E. coli O157:H7, including two who have died and three who have developed E. coli HUS, or hemolytic uremic syndrome.
On Halloween, Fairbank Farms recalled some 270 tons of ground beef that could be contaminated with the outbreak strain of this pathogen. State and federal health officials are cautioning consumers to check their freezers for the recalled ground beef, which was produced September 14, 15 and 16 and is marked with “EST 492″ inside the USDA mark of inspection. For a complete list of retailers who sold the hamburger meat, click here.
E. coli O157:H7 was banned from fresh ground beef in the United States in 1994 and an inspection monitoring program was started. Consumers are not to blame when contaminated meat ends up in their kitchen and sickens a family member. But whether preparing a home-cooked meal of hamburgers or ordering a hamburger from a restaurant, you should always ensure for your own safety that patties have been cooked to an internal temperature of 160 degrees. The simple rule is this: Color is not an indicator of doneness. An instant-read food thermometer will do the job.
Prior to June 1997, consumers who did not use a food thermometer were advised by USDA to cook ground beef patties
until the center and the cooked-out juices were no longer pink. Consumers were also advised to look for a firm “cooked” texture rather than a softer “raw or rare” texture in the meat.
However, research at Kansas State University in 1995 raised questions regarding the visual checks. Consequently, in June 1997, USDA issued a press release advising consumers to use a food thermometer when cooking ground beef patties, and not to rely on the internal color of the meat. Cooking to an internal temperature of 160 °F throughout kills E. coli O157:H7.
We now know that ferric pigment in ground beef can make the meat look brown even when raw. This depends on the exposure to oxygen and other factors in storage.
When ground beef is cooked, it changes color from red to pink to brown. If the meat is already brown, it will not change color during cooking. According to the USDA, recent research has shown some ground beef patties to look well-done at internal temperatures as low as 131 °F. The USDA’s own research has shown that more than 25 percent of fresh ground beef patties turned brown prematurely.
Conversely, some extra lean ground beef can still be pink on the inside when cooked to 160 degrees.
When eating out, ask your server if ground beef patties have been cooked to at least 155 °F for 15 seconds, as
recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Food Code. If not, send it back.
Reminders like this are important for the prevention of illness due to E. coli O157:H7, especially during an outbreak involving a half million pounds of ground beef. Our law firm has seen the devastation time and again brought by adulterated, undercooked hamburger.
E. coli HUS, in particular, is an extremely serious condition. It can cause kidney failure, brain damage, strokes, and seizures. The most likely victims are children under 5 and adults over 60.
Adults Failed Lincoln Middle School Students Sickened with E. coli
PROVIDENCE, RI — (Press Release)– Two students from Lincoln Middle School in Lincoln, Rhode Island, were hospitalized several days after a school field trip earlier this month to Camp Bournedale in Plymouth, Massachusetts. More than a dozen other students also were sickened.
Two of the students who attended the camp have tested positive for E. coli O157:H7, a serious illness that can lead to severe dehydration, hemorrhagic colitis and hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), the leading cause of kidney failure in children around the world.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the USDA are investigating foods at the camp as the likely source of this illness, according to the Rhode Island Department of Health.
The USDA involvement suggests that the source of this outbreak is contaminated meat served at Camp Bournedale. If so, these children were sickened because the slaughterhouse and/or the processor of the meat allowed cattle feces to get into the meat and did not do enough testing to discover the contamination. In addition, the camp, if it is involved, did not cook the meat well enough to kill the E. coli bacteria. Many adults failed these children.
“The American public should not have to guess about the safety of food served to children,” said Attorney Fred Pritzker, one of the nation’s most experienced practitioners of foodborne illness litigation.
Pritzker’s national food safety law firm has represented victims of most major E. coli outbreaks in the United States. The firm also recently represented families whose children suffered Salmonella poisoning at an environmental camp in Madison, New Hampshire. The cause of that outbreak was contaminated pudding.
“More resources must be devoted to federal food safety. The current system is undermined by too much fragmentation of responsibility and not enough coordination between federal, state and local agencies,” Pritzker said.
“One also has to wonder if microbiological testing is lax,” Pritzker said. “Ground beef and other meat products should not be allowed to leave the manufacturer unless their safety is confirmed. Eating a hamburger should not be a high-risk activity.”
Pritzker Olsen, P.A., is one of the few law firms in the United States that practices extensively in the area of foodborne illness litigation. The firm has collected millions of dollars on behalf of victims of E. coli poisoning and other foodborne illnesses. For more information, contact Fred Pritzker at 1-888-377-8900 (Toll Free) or email Fred at fhp@pritzkerlaw.com.
More Vaccine in Works To Stop Hamburger E. coli
A Minnesota company made headlines earlier this year by winning conditional license to market a vaccine to reduce the prevalence of E. coli O157:H7 in beef cattle.
Now a graduate student at the University of Saskatchewan is said to have created a vaccine to reduce other types of Shiga-toxin producing E. coli bacteria, or non-0157 STECs. Though E. coli O157 is the most prevalent STEC bacteria in North America, others are more dominant around the world. In Europe, O26 is the most common. In South America, it is O111. And there have been outbreaks involving 026 and 0111 in the United States.
The breakthrough by student microbiologist David Asper, which the University of Saskatchewan says is soon to be published, still must withstand three to five years of intensive testing in mice and cattle. And further more, like the vaccine already being sold for E. coli O157:H7 by Epitopix LLC, it must gain market acceptance by cattle ranchers to do any good for humans.
But it is somewhat heartening to families who have experienced severe illness or death from E. coli ground beef outbreaks that science continues to work on solutions. Hamburger E. coli outbreaks invariably bring cases of STEC infection that lead to hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a life-threatening disease that can cause renal failure, strokes, brain damage, spinal cord injury, heart problems and hemorrhaging. Children under 5 are the most susceptible and persons over 60 are most likely to die from the poison.
Asper’s vaccine would work by preventing non-O157 STEC organisms from attaching to the intestines of cattle. The bacteria commonly live in the hind guts of cattle without doing them harm. They can contaminate meat during the slaughtering process, when the intestines are nicked or when feces compacted on the animals’ hides spreads to carcasses. The microbes get ground into the meat during the making of hamburger and can survive in the core of the patty if the internal cooking temperature of the hamburger doesn’t reach 160 degrees.
In the U.S., E. coli O157:H7 is banned from ground beef, making it an adulterant. But in one of the many safety gaps that exist in our food safety system, no such classification is given to non-O157:H7 STECs.
Due to improved detection methods, cases of non-O157 E. coli infection are on the rise, increasing the importance of having the second-generation vaccine. “We can protect humans by vaccinating animals before they come in contact with the pathogen. I think that’s very important work that will lead to a lot fewer infections,” Asper said in The Star Phoenix newspaper.
E. coli HUS: How it Gets Made Into Hamburger
A New York Times report on ground beef E. coli outbreak dangers associated with industrial level hamburger grinding is still gaining attention around the country, including on the floor of the U.S. House and the office of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Vilsack said the Times report by Michael Moss, which focused on a 2007 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to Cargill hamburger patties, is boosting his department’s effort to fight E. coli.
Especially in children, cancer patients and older adults, the pathogen can lead to hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), an attack on red blood cells that can result in kidney failure, heart problems, strokes, brain damage and spinal cord injury. One of the victims of the Cargill ground beef E. coli outbreak was a young dance instructor who suffered paralysis after contracting E. coli HUS.
E. coli O157:H7 was banned from ground beef in 1994, but grinding plants aren’t required to test incoming beef trim and scrap that is used to make ground beef. In fact, as the Times story showed, some big slaughterhouses won’t sell meat to grinders if the plants test the shipments for E. coli. That’s because a positive result would likely mandate a multi-customer recall of the supplier’s meat.
U.S. Representative Louise M. Slaughter, D- New York, and chairwoman of the Rules Committee, read parts of The New York Times article on the House floor this week and said the lingering pathogens in meat and the industry’s use of antibiotics were threatening to harm exports of beef to Europe. Rep. Slaughter is a microbiologist.
“We’ve got to get people to understand what’s going on here,” she said.
One of the big moments in the story was Costco’s food safety director saying industry giant Tyson wouldn’t sell beef trim to Costco’s grinding operation because Costco’s policy is to test incoming shipments. Tyson did not respond to the statement directly.
A follow-up story in the Times said Costco has reached an agreement with Tyson that allows Costco to test the trimmings before they are mixed with those from other suppliers.
The food safety officer at American Foodservice, which grinds 365 million pounds of hamburger a year, said it stopped testing trimmings a decade ago because of resistance from slaughterhouses. “They would not sell to us,” said Timothy P. Biela, the officer. “If I test and it’s positive, I put them in a regulatory situation. So we don’t do that.”
Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), told the Times that his agency could mandate testing, but that it needed to consider the impact on companies as well as consumers.
“I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health,” Dr. Petersen said.
In damage-control mode after Peterson’s comment was aired in the Times story, Vilsack said in his prepared statement that public health and food safety was USDA’s priority. But he didn’t address whether USDA would consider mandating E. coli tests of ingredients that arrive at grinding plants.
The Times story was an important national story because it showed that eating ground beef is still a gamble. There have been 16 ground beef E. coli outbreaks in the past three years. In the Cargill E. coli hamburger outbreak of 2007, the company recalled 845,000 pounds of ground beef produced at its plant in Butler, Wisconsin, after people began to fall ill.
The “Angus Beef Patties” found to be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 were really made with cheap, fatty beef trim, scrap and other cheap beef ingredients that came from multiple slaughterhouses, one as far away as Uruguay. The Times story went back and traced where the ingredients came from, noting that Cargill used beef parts most likely to come in contact with E. coli during the slaughter process.
Click here to see the original Times story.
E coli in the Brain: Tragic and Not Fully Understood
Since hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) is the leading cause of kidney failure in children in the United States, it receives a lot of attention as one of the most dangerous complications than can spill from an E. coli O157:H7 infection.
Less common but just as frightening is E. coli in the brain, also known as E. coli meningitis. As is the case with most foodborne infectious diseases, the people most vulnerable to this complication are young children and older adults. We have seen cases in children, for instance, where they have recovered but suffered brain damage to the extent where they have had to re-learn how to read. It’s heartbreaking stuff and scary because science still doesn’t comprehend it well enough to prevent it or advance the treatment of it.1
To better understand E. coli in the brain, let’s step back and look at the organism itself. Not all E. coli microbes are capable of causing this condition. The prime culprit is E. coli O157:H7, which emits Shiga toxin. Other serotypes of E. coli also produce Shiga toxin and are equally destructive and dangerous.
E. coli organisms swim and fall like wacky submarines. Each one sprouts a half-dozen propellers from its cigar-shaped body that are in the form of whips. The whips have hooks on the end that help them grab the walls of large intestine, which is their favorite habitat. They swim fast — about 10 lengths of their own body per second.
E. coli bacteria cause diarrhea, often bloody. These micro-bugs feed off the iron in the blood and when they cluster in sufficient strength, they can infect the bloodstream.
One of the body’s key defense systems against bacterial and viral infection is the blood-brain barrier, which blocks foreign particles but allows nutrition to pass into the central nervous system to keep cells healthy. Shiga toxin-producing E. coli somehow penetrate the defense system by interacting chemically with brain microvascular endothelial cells that help make up the blood-brain barrier.
These interactions during the invasion are the focus of continuing study of how to prevent E. coli in the brain. People who develop this complication, which includes inflammation of the brain membrane, can suffer brain injury, spinal cord damage or death. Possible advanced symptoms include seizures, altered consciousness, behavioral changes, double vision and dizziness. Early symptoms can include headache, fever and stiff neck.
To have an attorney at national food safety law firm Pritzker Olsen Attorneys review your E. coli in the brain case free of charge, call 1-888-377-8900 (Toll Free). You could also complete an online form to receive a free case consultation.
The firm is dedicated to prevention of foodborne illness and has been an advocate for improving food safety legislation and inspection.
1Source: Strategy of Escherichia coli for Crossing the Blood-Brain Barrier
Kwang Sik Kim Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland
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