Top 10 reasons telling people to 'just cook it' sucks as a food safety strategy
About 18 months after the 1993 Jack-in-the-Box E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, I, the erstwhile graduate student, gave a talk to a bunch of food safety types from government and industry. I showed a clip from ABC’s 20/20 television program about a family fighting for regulatory change, and many in the audience laughed at the family when their kitchen was shown. Audience members commented that the consumers were sloppy in their cooking and of course they got sick, and if only they would cook hamburger properly E. coli O157:H7 wouldn’t happen.
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I thought the response of the audience was sort of appalling.
In mid-1994, Michael Taylor was appointed chief of USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. On Sept. 29, 1994, USDA said it would now regard E. coli O157:H7 in raw ground beef as an “adulterant,” a substance that should not be present in the product. By mid-October, 1994, Taylor announced plans to launch a nationwide sampling of ground beef to assess how much E. coli O157:H7 was in the marketplace. The 5,000 samples would be taken during the year from supermarkets and meat processing plants “to set an example and stimulate companies to put in preventive measures.” Positive samples would prompt product recalls of the entire affected lot, effectively removing it from any possibility of sale.
That's the long-winded version for what a USDA official said in a 1994 television interview: we'll stop blaming consumers when they get sick from the food and water they consume.
But the just-cook-it crowd persisted. And still does today.
A couple of weeks ago, while announcing a ground beef recall in Colorado, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service stated in a release,
FSIS would like to remind consumers of the importance of following food safety guidelines when handling and preparing raw meat. Ground beef should be cooked to a safe minimum internal temperature of 160° Fahrenheit.
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I would like to remind FSIS that it ain’t so easy to handle contaminated ground beef and not spread it around a home or food service kitchen.
Jim Marsden, a former vp at the American Meat Institute and now a professor at Kansas State University, wrote in his meatingplace.com blog last week, the top-10 reasons “just cook it” does not, and will not, work.
1. E. coli O157:H7 is a unique pathogen. The levels of this organism necessary to cause infection are very low.
2. The severity of the disease E. coli O157:H7 can cause, especially in children is devastating.
3. In many cases, parents order hamburgers for their children and rely on restaurants to cook them properly. In restaurants, parents really have no control over whether the hamburgers they order are sufficiently cooked to eliminate possible contamination from E. coli O157:H7.
4. If consumers unknowingly bring this pathogen into their kitchens, it is almost impossible to avoid cross contamination. Even the smallest amount of contamination on a food that is not cooked can cause illness. Many of the reported cases of E. coli O157:H7 have involved ground beef that was clearly cooked at times and temperatures sufficient to inactivate E. coli O157:H7. Some other vector, i.e. cross contamination was probably involved.
5. Even if consumers attempt to use thermometers to measure cooking temperature, it is difficult to properly measure the internal temperature of hamburger patties. They would have to use an accurate thermometer and place the probe exactly into the center of the patty. In addition, the inactivation of E. coli O157:H7 is dependent on cooking time and temperature. For example, if they cook to 155 degrees F, they should hold that temperature for 16 seconds. It is not realistic to expect that consumers, many of which are children will scientifically measure the internal temperature of hamburgers.
6. The way ground beef is packaged, it is virtually impossible to remove it from packages or chubs and make patties without spreading contamination if it is present.
7. Sometimes ground beef appears to be cooked when it really isn’t. There is a phenomenon called “premature browning” that can make ground beef appear to be fully cooked when in fact it is undercooked.
8. E. coli O157:H7 may be present in beef products other than ground beef. For example, in non-intact beef products, including tenderized steaks that are not always cooked to temperatures required for inactivation.
9. There have been many cases and outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 associated with foods that are not cooked (i.e. fresh cut produce).
10. As Senator Patrick Leahy said after the 1993 Jack-in-the-Box outbreak – “The death penalty is too strong a punishment for undercooking a hamburger”. He was right –consumers will make mistakes. There needs to be a margin of safety so that undercooking does not result in disease or death.
http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/admin/trackback/149674
This is something I wrote several years ago:
Response to the Meat Industry
"It is not the failure of the Meat Industry in not keeping cattle feces out of hamburger that sickened the child, but it is the fault of the parent who handled and cooked the hamburger that was fed to the child."
This is a typical response to a sickened child by the meat industry and their lawyers.
At first I calmly tried to respond that the Meat Industry that makes a profit off of selling "USDA Inspected Meat" can not blame the consumer if the product actually contains a pathogen that can severely sicken or kill a child. What other product in the United States would a manufacturer expect consumers to fix themselves before they used it?
The reply to my calm response was "the consumer should know that meat may contain bacteria and they are told to cook it."
My calmness has now faded. Think about the little labels on meat that you buy in the store - the ones that tell you to cook the meat to 160 degrees - of course they also say USDA inspected too. However, the labels do not say "THE USDA INSPECTION MEANS NOTHING. THIS PRODUCT MAY CONTAIN A PATHOGENIC BACTERIA THAT CAN SEVERELY SICKEN OR KILL YOU AND/OR YOUR CHILD. HANDLE THIS PRODUCT WITH EXTREME CARE." I wonder why the Meat Industry does not want a label like that on your pound of hamburger. It knows that the label is truthful. Do you think it might be concerned that Moms and Dads would stop buying it? The day the industry puts a similar label on hamburger is the day that I will go work for them.
The reality is that the Meat Industry can not assure the public that the meat we buy is not contaminated. So, instead of finding a way to get cattle feces out of our meat, they blame parents (and presumably all the teenagers that work at all the burger joints in America) when children get sick.
Consumers can always do better. However, study after study shows that, despite the CDC estimated 76 million people getting sick every year from food borne illnesses, the American public still has misconceptions and overconfidence in our Nation's food supply.
According to a study by the Partnership for Food Safety Education, fewer than half of the respondents knew that fresh vegetables and fruits could contain harmful bacteria, and only 25% thought that eggs and dairy products could be contaminated. Most consumers believe that food safety hazards can be seen or smelled. Only 25% of consumers surveyed knew that cooking temperatures were critical to food safety, and even fewer knew that foods should be refrigerated promptly after cooking. Consumers do not expect that things that you can not see in your food can kill you.
Consumers are being blamed, but most lack the knowledge or tools to properly protect themselves and their children. The FDA has stated that "unlike other pathogens, E. coli O157:H7 has no margin for error. It takes only a microscopic amount to cause serious illness or even death." Over the last few years our Government and the Meat Industry have repeatedly told the consumer to cook hamburger until there is no pink. Yet, recent university and USDA studies show meat can turn brown before it is actually "done." Now the consumer is urged to use a thermometer to test the internal temperature of the meat. However, how do you use one, and who really has one?
Many consumers wrongly believe the Government is protecting the food supply. How many times have we heard our Government officials spout "The US food supply is the safest in the world." Remember, however, that it was the USDA that sat on positive E. coli tests for over a week that allowed this recent ConAgra E. coli outbreak to spiral out of control.
Where is the multi-million dollar ad campaign to convince us of the dangers of hamburger, like we do for tobacco? The USDA's FightBAC and Thermy education programs are limited, and there are no studies to suggest that they are effective. Most consumers learn about food safety from TV and family members - If your TV viewing habits and family are like mine, these are highly suspect sources of good information.
The bottom line is that you can not leave the last bacteria "Kill Step" to a parent or to a kid in a fast food joint. The industry that makes billions off of selling meat must step up and clean up their mess. They can, and someday will, if I have anything to say about it. That day will come much faster if they start working on it now, and stop blaming the victims.
I have a great deal to say, but I will try to keep it brief.
First, I am a mom whose 16 month is still in the recovery phase from HUS. There is no excuse for this.It would take me several paragrpahs to even try to describe the horror of this experience and the impact it has had on his quality of life. He is at 40% kidney function on a special diet that no toddle should have to be on.
Second, as a professional working in Food Safety I would like to say the rhetoric about cook it enough is just that RHETORIC. I am ultra cautious and my son still nearly died... he didn't have a hamburger. He had a bite of very carefully prepared spaghetti with ground beef, though a particular company is saying it is not the right match (doesn't match their particular sample and so they should be allowed to ignore what that means about their food safety practices).
ECOLI 0175 is such a neat little term. After living through the near death of my baby, I can tell as a mother and a professional what needs to be recognized. ECOLI is SHIT, literally. I did not pay for SHIT and I sure would not have fed anyone SHIT. I think the execs of the company that decided it was okay to sell SHIT based on a risk assessment should be sentenced to take packages of ground beef laced with ecoli0157:h7 home to their families and PROPERLY PREPARE it and then BE FORCED TO EAT IT. Even if they did get sick this still would not be appropriate justice, becasue when their bowel movements started progressing from looking like strawberry puree to hemolyzed blood they would know what was happening and might get to go on dialysis that much sooner...or get the right intervention before their rectum prolapsed from horrific constant spasms. They would still get to worry what the long term implications might be in terms of damage or from blood transfusions, but then just maybe they could pull their head out of their ass and really understand what is at stake in a risk assessement when trying to decide whether to start a recall. I got my notice a week after my baby had been in the hospital... over a month after the purchase was made. Interestingly, in the labs I oversee we kinda sorta know if something is there in like 24 hrs, like before product would even ship... guess they must have WAYYYY different techniques, like will the cost of the recall be greater than the increase in the insurance bill... whew good deal my fat bonus is safe and afterall it's the consumers fault for not properly cooking it.
In summary, I would like to say from the bottom of my heart to those fine people that made that call, "GO eat ECOLI 0157:H7 and DIE."