Feds expand E. coli testing in meat

CBS/AP

(AP) WASHINGTON - The government is expanding E. coli testing in some raw meat, a move expected to prevent more people from contracting the bacteria that can cause severe illness or death.

Starting Monday, the meat industry will have to test beef trimmings for six new strains of E. coli that have been linked to a growing number of illnesses.

Until now, the meat industry has been required to test for just one strain of the pathogen, known as E. coli O157:H7. That strain was identified after an outbreak at Jack in the Box fast-food restaurants killed four children.

But illnesses from that strain have decreased over the years while more people have been sickened by other strains found in foods such as lettuce and ground beef.

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Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the change is needed to protect Americans from foodborne illnesses.

"We cannot ignore the evidence that these pathogens are a threat in our nation's food supply," Vilsack said Wednesday.

E. coli

Video: Spotting the symptoms »

Food safety advocates for years have been pushing the Obama administration to expand testing, but the change was delayed while the meat industry fought the proposal. The industry has said the tests are too expensive and there aren't enough benefits.

The new tests will be conducted on beef trimmings — parts of the cow used to make ground beef — and expanded later to ground beef itself and other cuts.

Last year, the agency collected nearly 2,700 samples for testing from meat processing plants nationwide. That number won't change, but each sample will now be tested for the six additional E. coli strains.

Thousands of people are sickened each year by E. coli bacteria that can cause diarrhea, dehydration and, in the most severe cases, kidney failure. The very young, the elderly and those with weak immune systems are the most susceptible to illness.

Safety experts advise consumers to cook ground beef to a temperature of 160 degrees.

[flounder91]

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Are USDA assurances on mad cow case 'gross oversimplification'?


SNIP...


What irks many scientists is the USDA's April 25 statement that the rare disease is "not generally associated with an animal consuming infected feed."

The USDA's conclusion is a "gross oversimplification," said Dr. Paul Brown, one of the world's experts on this type of disease who retired recently from the National Institutes of Health. "(The agency) has no foundation on which to base that statement."

"We can't say it's not feed related," agreed Dr. Linda Detwiler, an official with the USDA during the Clinton Administration now at Mississippi State.

In the May 1 email to me, USDA's Cole backed off a bit. "No one knows the origins of atypical cases of BSE," she said

The argument about feed is critical because if feed is the cause, not a spontaneous mutation, the California cow could be part of a larger outbreak.


SNIP...


http://bseusa.blogspot.com/2012/05/are-usda-assurances-on-mad-cow-case.html



Sunday, May 27, 2012
CANADA PLANS TO IMPRISON ANYONE SPEAKING ABOUT MAD COW or ANY OTHER DISEASE OUTBREAK, CENSORSHIP IS A TERRIBLE THING

http://madcowusda.blogspot.com/2012/05/canada-plans-to-imprison-anyone.html




TSS

[hvshields]

Testing should be increased for BOTH mad cow and e. coli.

In 2006, after the third US mad cow was found, the USDA cut back from 300,000 tests a year to under 40,000.. And only 5000 of those reduced tests were on downers, the animals most likely to be infected. The USDA was determined to avoid trade and financial problems by not detecting any more mad cows.

Even after the recent 4th US mad cow, USDA still proclaims US mad cow free. In fact mad cow has been circulating and amplifying in the US herd since 1985, when Dr. Richard Marsh proved Wisconsin farmed mink fed downer cows contracted transmissible mink encephalopathy

Alzheimer's is a prion disease with over 6 million victims and a new case every 69 seconds. www.alzheimers-prions.com/ Pathways of risk to livestock and deer (chronic wasting disease) are ingesting soil with fodder from land spread sewage sludge infected with human and animal prions. (human and animal prion victims have infectious prions in their urine, feces, saliva, mucous and blood). Tainted feed is also a risk: Over a million UNTESTED downer cows each year are rendered into animal feed. Chickens are fed the infected feed and chicken feces are then fed back to cows, Also, calves are fed blood from untested livestock.

The USDA deceived the public by saying the most recent "atypical" (BASE = Bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy) mad cow case presented no risk of infection to humans. The truth from Dr. EE Comoy, et al:

"Our results point to a possibly higher degree of pathogenicity of BASE than classical BSE in primates and also raise a question about a possible link to one uncommon subset of cases of apparently sporadic CJD. [Creutzfeldt Jakob = fatal prion disease] Thus, despite the waning epidemic of classical BSE, the occurrence of atypical strains should temper the urge to relax measures currently in place to protect public health from accidental contamination by BSE-contaminated products."

The route of human prion disease infection (AD & CJD) are aging asymptomatic dairy cows infected with BASE mad cow, which are ending up UNTESTED in huge industrial mixing vats of hamburger, each containing meat from 50 to 100 animals from multiple states and two to four countries http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/burger21904.cfm

Scraps from the slaughterhouse floors are the hamburger (and pink slime) feedstock and the source of e. coli and salmonella.

Helane Shields, Alton, NH [e-mail]

[thechooch1]

Didn't the House try and cut the budget for food inspections?

[smc021-2009]

maybe you should be checked out a couple a times a year to see if your brain has started functioning again what does that have to do with with testing for bacteria that make people sick