Why I’m Mad About Meat Patties –- And Why You Should Be, Too
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It’s been a week and change since I read the sobering and horrifying New York Times story about Stephanie Smith, a 22-year-old dancer from Minnesota, who became deathly ill and is now paralyzed as the result of eating an E.coli-tainted hamburger patty.
As I read reporter Michael Moss’s expose, the lead story of the Sunday edition with two full inside pages (called a double truck in the biz), I felt a collegial sense of pride. At last, I thought, the mainstream media is giving its full attention to a broken down food regulatory system that allows corporate greed and speed to prevail over safety, responsibility and commitment to the American public.
But as I worked my way through the story, which traces the complicated origins of the Cargill-produced frozen beef patties – “made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin…from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria” — that ultimately sickened Ms. Smith and 939 others in 2007 (and prompts a massive recall of 844,812 pounds of meat), I was seething with anger.
Well-read though I may be on the crowded, unsanitary conditions on industrial feedlots (and the mistreatment of workers and animals), this story found me incredulous. Here was a young, able-bodied woman whose life is forever changed – by eating a hamburger patty.
A hamburger patty.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 76 million Americans fall ill to foodborne pathogens (that’s one in four Americans), which put about 325,000 in the hospital and kill 5,000 each year. Data from the Economic Research Service of the USDA estimates that foodborne illnesses account for about 1 of every 100 U.S. hospitalizations and 1 of every 500 U.S. deaths.
Relatively speaking, the annual toll of E. coli O157:H7 — 2,000 hospitalizations and 61 deaths – is small. Although the recovery rate for E. coli O157:H7 is high, up to 10 percent of illnesses progress to Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), which can lead to kidney failure, seizures, heart attacks, brain damage and paralysis (in Ms. Smith’s case) and death.
Compared to leading causes of death such as heart disease and cancer, maybe E.coli poisoning seems like a needless source of worry. In fact, if you listened to Patrick Boyle, President and CEO of American Meat Institute, on Larry King Live earlier this week, you heard that “the beef supply is safer today in terms E. coli incidents than it was five years ago. It was safer five years ago than it was ten years ago. We continue to make enormous investments in technology and process controls.”
So….how does he explain the 5.3 million pounds of recalled beef in 2008? Or the 380,000 pounds this summer?
The elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about is how the meat gets tainted in the first place. In the words of journalist Eric Schlosser, who wrote the groundbreaking “Fast Food Nation”: There is shit in the meat.
According to AMI’s Boyle: There are two ways to “eliminate E. coli in the ground beef supply. One is through irradiation, which is not widely used. And the other is through proper cooking of the product.”
Hmm. So shit doesn’t have anything to do with it all?
It’s a lot more complicated than this, but here it is in a nutshell: We know that at minimum 1 percent of feedlot cattle are infected with E. coli, which lives in their guts. (Why there’s so much shit everywhere is another story for another time.) When those infected cattle are slaughtered and processed into ground beef, the pathogen is ubiquitous.
More math from Schlosser: “A modern processing plant can produce 800,000 pounds of hamburger a day, meat that will be shipped throughout the United States. A single animal infected with E.coli 0157:H7 can contaminate 32,000 pounds of that ground beef.”
Translated, that’s 64,000 half-pound beef patties.
Maybe you’re thinking that the overall fatalities for E. coli are minimal compared to all the other diseases and life-threatening conditions that the world must endure. There are people starving, for crying out loud.
But me, I think 61 people is way too many to die from eating E.coli-contaminated burgers, spinach or cookie dough. One is too many.
In the movie version of Fast Food Nation, meat executive Don Anderson (played by Greg Kinnear) confides in his colleague Harry Rydell (Bruce Willis) about the shit-in-the-meat situation. Harry’s response: It is a sad fact of life, Don, but the truth is we all have to eat a little shit from time to time.
Actually, we don’t, Harry.
Irradiation, like Mister Boyle of AMI suggests, doesn’t sound like such a good idea, and we consumers need not shoulder all the blame for “improper cooking.” We don’t need to give up eating meat, either.
A couple of ideas:
Think small farm versus big. Next time you’re craving meat, instead of the supermarket, consider heading to a farmer’s market and meet a local livestock farmer practicing small-scale husbandry. Find out how he or she is feeding, raising and slaughtering the livestock and ask questions. (See my review of “The Compassionate Carnivore” by farmer Catherine Friend)
Diversify your diet. Maybe try taking a break from meat once a week?
Put pressure on your senator to pass the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 (S. 510), which would, among other things, create a higher level of safety and sanitation standards for food facilities, agricultural commodities and transport, expand the authority of Health & Human Services to regulate food, including tracking raw food commodities and expansion of foodborne illness surveillance. This is a good thing.
Don’t get complacent. Get busy. Call me if you need a hand.
*The original version of this essay incorrectly stated that 1 in 4 Americans were hospitalized each year as a result of foodborne illnesses. The text has been corrected.
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Bravo for thinking small! If we don’t know the farmer, we don’t eat the meat (and, truth be told, there are several farmers we know whose product we avoid).
Is there anything in S.510 that you might know about that would help develop small, regional slaughterhouses? All the farmers I talk to in the Hudson Valley bemoan the difficulty and expense of laboring under USDA regs designed for sites that process millions of pounds of beef, not a few carefully grass-fed heritage breeds. There’s a place near Albany with a long waiting list and at the next nearest, there’s this story of the farmer bringing 4 prized steers only to receive back 11 full hanger steaks (which is anatomically impossible even with the best beef!)
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Todd, before I replied, I wanted to double check with food safety attorney Bill Marler, who probably knows more about this issue than anyone. (Check out his latest online project, Food Safety News –www.foodsafetynews.com)
Says he: Neither S. 510 nor the House version (which passed in July) includes language about development and/or assistance for small regional slaughterhouses: “Something needs to come from USDA/FSIS and or the Ag committees in House and Senate.”
Thanks Kim! Marler’s site looks like a wonderful resource. I especially liked his comment … “A true fact – in 17 years of litigating nearly every food borne illness outbreak, almost all were caused in whole or in part, by mass produced food. I have never sued a farmer’s market.”
In response to another comment. See in context »This just in: Senator Gillibrand (D-NY), a co-sponsor of S.510 has introduced additional legislation that would mandate E.coli inspections of ground beef:
http://gillibrand.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/?id=72891512-7C22-474D-8667-8E5CF66D3C38
Hi, Kim. Have enjoyed your columns since WaPo days (not so long ago, really). Agree completely on our “modern” food processing techniques; we’ve been getting to know local producers and enjoying their products immensely.
I was confused, though, about the following: “According to 2001 data (yes, I know, it’s old) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), foodborne pathogens put about 325,000 Americans in the hospital (that’s one in four Americans) and kill about 5,000 each year.”
I’ll admit I’m not great at math, but I don’t understand how 325,000 is one in four Americans. Could you shed some light on that?
Thanks!
Micklethwaite, my bad (the result of late-night writing). What I meant to say is: There are approximately 76 million cases of foodborne illness per year in this country, according to the CDC, which is about 1 in 4 Americans (based on latest population stats: 304 million). Thank you for speaking up. Change will be made in body of text now. Cheers.
In response to another comment. See in context »Hi Kim–
I think the same rules apply: the less processed your food the better. Who knew that ground meat was being “washed” with ammonia! I guess this is why Europeans did not want to import American produced chickens that were being washed in chlorine or some chemical.
People have got to wrap their heads around the idea that convenience may come at a price. If you want to eat ground meat, best to grind whole cuts yourself at home instead of buying pre-made patties. A meat grinder is best for this but I’ve even read that a food processor is workable for grinding meat for burgers, meatloaf, and meatballs.
I recently heard that commercially produced ground turkey also has all sorts of parts and scraps thrown in as filler. After making turkey burgers from ground turkey I’d bought from a butcher, which wasn’t much more expensive, I may never go back to Shadybrook Farms or Perdue again.