Tainted
meats point to superbug C. diff in food
Study finds gut germ in 40 percent of grocery meats;
CDC says not to worry
Source of Article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27774614/
By JoNel Aleccia Health
writer msnbc.com updated 5:22 a.m. PT, Tues.,
Nov. 18, 2008
A potentially deadly intestinal germ
increasingly found in hospitals is also showing up in a more unsavory
setting: grocery store meats. More
than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Nearly
30 percent of the contaminated samples of ground beef, pork and turkey and
ready-to-eat meats like summer sausage were identical or closely related to a
super-toxic strain of C. diff blamed
for growing rates of illness and death in the U.S. — raising the
possibility that the bacterial infections may be transmitted through food. “These data suggest
that domestic animals, by way of retail meats, may be a source of C. difficile for human infection,” said J. Glenn Songer, a professor of veterinary science at the But
specialists from the CDC and scientists who study C. diff said the connection
between the presence of C. diff bacteria and infection has not been
established and that there’s not enough evidence about food transmission to
warrant public alarm. “There
are no documented cases of people getting Clostridium difficile
infection from eating food that contains C. difficile,”
said Dr. L. Clifford McDonald, chief of prevention and response for a
division of the CDC. “However, because C. difficile
has been found in some retail meats, that possibility does exist.” Songer's
samples included brands sold in grocery stores across the nation.
Contamination ranged from 41 percent of pork products and 44 percent of
turkey products to 50 percent of ground beef samples and more than 62 percent
of samples of braunschweiger, a type of liverwurst.
Nearly
three-quarters of the C. diff spores were toxinotype
V, a type linked to illness in pigs and calves and, increasingly, in humans, Songer noted. 80 percent of infections occur in hospitals About
80 percent of C. difficile infections now occur in
hospital or health care settings — and the number of infections is rising.
About 13 in every 1,000 hospital patients is infected or colonized with the
bacteria, a rate between 6.5
and 20 times higher than previously estimated, according to figures released
last week by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and
Epidemiology, or APIC. Every
day, those infections likely cost $32 million, on average, and claim more
than 300 lives, the study showed. Especially
worrisome has been a new, more virulent strain, called NAP1, which produces
about 20 times the toxins of ordinary strains. It can cause severe, repeated
diarrhea that resists all but the most powerful drugs. In worst cases, C.
diff infection can destroy the colon and lead to blood poisoning and death. It’s
not clear, however, where the remaining infections — those that occur outside
health settings, in the community — originate. Recent victims have included a
10-year-old girl with no history of antibiotic use who became very ill but
recovered and a 31-year-old woman pregnant with twins who spontaneously
aborted her babies and then died after becoming infected, according to a 2005
review by the CDC. “For
these community-associated sources, there has to be a source outside the
hospitals,” Songer said. “It may well be that
retail meats are a source or the main source.” C.
diff is a tricky bug, hard to kill with anything but bleach in the hospital
and able to survive most cooking techniques in the kitchen. And, unlike scary
infections like E. coli 0157:H7, which has transmitted illness through foods
from ground beef to fresh spinach, C. diff can't be traced quickly to its
source. "With
difficile, you can eat a nice, thick braunschweiger sandwich today, then two weeks from now
you get strep throat, take antibiotics and develop difficile-related
disease," Songer explained. "You're weeks
separated from the event." Songer
detected C. diff in every type of meat he tested, including uncooked ground
beef, pork and turkey; pork sausage and chorizo; and ready-to-eat products
including beef summer sausage and pork braunschweiger,
a spreadable liver sausage luncheon meat. He
collected 88 samples of retail packaged meats bought from large chain stores
near Thirty-seven
of the samples, or nearly 42 percent, showed evidence of C. diff, including
about 40 percent of the cooked products and nearly 48 percent of the
ready-to-eat products.
Contamination could be nationwide “My
perspective on this is not to blow the whistle on the meat production or meat
processing agencies but to point out that we may have a problem and if we do
we should work together to solve it,” he said. At
least one meat industry official said Songer’s
findings served as a warning to producers, but that the research hasn’t been
replicated. Liz Wagstrom, assistant vice president
of science and technology for the National Pork Board, said she’s awaiting
confirmation from the CDC and other sources. “I
feel very confident in the safety of our product,” she said. “If there is any
animal-to-human transmission, it is a very small part of the picture.” James
“Bo” Reagan, chairman of the Beef Industry Food Safety Council, declined to
discuss specific strategies for addressing C. diff. Instead, in an e-mail to
msnbc.com, he said beef producers have spent $27 million on research to
identify new food safety technologies and processes. “Our
efforts have resulted in new safeguards throughout the beef production chain
and we continue to work with our partners in beef production to find ways to
ensure beef is safe,” Reagan wrote in an e-mail. ‘Yes,
it's there’ Neither
report, however, definitively answers questions about C. diff in the food
supply, said the study's lead researcher J. Scott Weese,
an associate professor of pathobiology at the “Yes,
it’s there,” he said. “But we need to find out how much is there.” Processed
meats like those Songer studied may be more likely
to show contamination because they combine sources of meat and because they
require more handling than, for instance, a pork chop from a single pig, Weese said. In
addition, scientists don’t know when C. diff exposure sparks infection in
people — or how much of a dose is necessary to cause infection, said Dr. Dale
N. Gerding, a national expert in C. diff
epidemiology and a professor with the Stritch
School of Medicine at Loyola University in Chicago. “With
a real susceptible source, it only takes a few spores,” he said. Bug might be in water, soil — even vegetables “We
actually wouldn’t know if a carrot in the dirt would have it just as much as
hamburger,” Gerding said. That's
little comfort to Mary Woodard, 51, of Woodard
is scared the infection will return, or that it will strike one of her other
grandchildren. Word that C. diff has been detected in meat made Woodard think
twice, despite CDC assurances to the contrary. "I'll
cut back, probably, on my meat eating," she said. "After seeing her
with the bad cramping, I don't want to see her like that again." Most
consumers worried about C. diff infection should pay closest attention to
hospitals and health care settings, Gerding said.
Lax hand hygiene, improperly cleaned hospital rooms and overuse of
antibiotics are far more likely to transmit C. diff than food products. Although
C. diff spores can be hard to kill, even Songer
said most healthy consumers don’t need to change their diets because of the
bug. |
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