Washing
Our Way to Cleaner Meat
Source of Article: http://www.swnewsherald.com/online_contentcrf/2008/09/es-aug5_meat.php
By
There's no shortage of bad news these days, is there?
Gas prices, a roller-coaster stock market, soaring food prices... just
"pick your poison."
So how about some good news for a change — a great example of something that
really, really works and resulted from research funded by your tax dollars?
Here goes!
You've no doubt seen the
news stories about outbreaks of illness caused by harmful bacteria in various
vegetables, from spinach and tomatoes to an ever-widening list of suspects. Of
course, fruits and veggies aren't the only types of food that have been
implicated in food-poisoning outbreaks over the years; meat and dairy products
have also had their uncomfortable moments in the spotlight.
But the
After a multi-state outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 infections from hamburgers in
the western United States from November 1992 to late February 1993 — an
outbreak that sickened hundreds and killed four children — the ARS scientists
in
One of the most fascinating discoveries to come out of that investigation has
been that the principal source of E. coli O157:H7 in ground beef isn't
somewhere inside the cow; it's the animal's hide.
Previously, most of the activities to try to prevent E. coli O157:H7
contamination of meat focused on eliminating the pathogen from the cow's feces.
But the research at
Although E. coli O157:H7 can wreak devastation on the human body by
deactivating ribosomes and destroying kidney cells,
cattle can carry the same pathogens with no ill effects. The ARS research
revealed that the pathogen tends to gather on the cattle's hides. This can
become a serious problem if the meat becomes contaminated while the hide is
being removed from the carcass.
First the scientists
experimented with chemically removing the hair from the hide. This process
proved very effective, reducing the bacterial prevalence from 50 percent to 1.3
percent in one study. But the process was prohibitively expensive, and therefore
seemed impractical for widespread industry use.
So the scientists turned their attention
to cleaning the hide before removal — and there they hit the jackpot.
They developed a system in which the
hide-on carcass is cleaned in a washing cabinet with high-pressure water to
remove excess organic matter from the hide. Next, the hide is sprayed with an
antibacterial compound. The scientists came up with an impressive list of
compounds that proved effective, from phosphoric acid to substances with
tongue-tangling names like cetylpyridinium chloride.
Remember that great Ralph Waldo Emerson
quote about "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to
your door"? The
And the benefits reach beyond stopping E.
coli O157:H7. Since the beef industry began using the washing cabinets, the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have also noted significant
reductions in illnesses caused by the pathogens Listeria, Campylobacter, Yersina and Salmonella.
Two partner corporations — American Fresh
Foods and American Foodservice — that use the hide-wash system have high praise
for it. Those two corporations produce more than 350 million pounds of ground
beef every year for supermarkets, commercial fast-food outlets, and casual
dining. They sample their products every 20 minutes to test for E. coli
O157:H7, and conduct more than 15,000 additional tests each year for other
pathogens.
How do they describe the hide-washing
system? As their chief food safety officer put it, "It's incredibly
effective... It's almost unbelievable."
Don't you just love it when something
really works? I do!
___________
Copyright (C) All rights reserved
under FoodHACCP.com
If
you have any comments, please send your
email to info@foodhaccp.com
