The food safety community is frustrated by the lack of any listing from National Steak and Poultry company (NSP) or the USDA identifying which restaurants received steaks sold by NSP in October that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7.
The E. coli steak problem was discovered by state and federal health officials investigating an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, South Dakota and Washington associated with blade-tenderized steaks.
Dr. Douglas Powell’s popular Barfblog acknowledged that national food safety law firm Pritzker Olsen was the first to publicly identify the potential outbreak from blade-tenderized steaks sold to national restaurants. The firm has been investigating the outbreak for weeks and has been in contact with at least one victim.
Pritzker Olsen founder and president Fred Pritzker has called on NSP to identify restaurants affected by this recall pay all medical bills and lost wages for victims of this outbreak. If you have information about this outbreak, contact Pritzker Olsen at 1-888-377-8900.
On December 24, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced a recall of 248,000 pounds of steaks packed by National Steak and Poultry on October 12, 13, 14 and 21. These steaks were shipped to retaurants nationwide and a cluster of E. coli illnesses was identified and associated with blade-tenderized steaks. Recalled cases of steaks bear USDA establishment number EST 6010T.
The USDA regularly publishes a retail distribution list for all high-risk E. coli recalls, but the National Steak and Poultry outbreak is still active and there is no official listing of where the potentially contaminated steaks were delivered.
The danger of this restaurant steak E. coli outbreak is that many customers like their steak cooked rare or medium rare. Those choices are safe when the steak is intact and unprocessed. But studies have shown that mechanical tenderizing of steak with blades and needles pushes surface E. coli into the meat, where it can be insulated from flames and heat that normally kill the pathogens.
This outbreak should teach the meat and restaurant industries to label tenderized, non-intact steaks as dangerous and inform all customers of the risk of undercooking these cuts of beef. The needle-tenderized and injected steaks should be handled more like ground beef, which is required to be cooked to 160 degrees throughout to kill E. coli O157:H7. This human pathogen can cause life-long damage and health consequences in a significant subset of patients.
