USDA Considers Labeling to Curb Steak E coli Outbreaks
Jerry Mande, the USDA’s deputy undersecretary for food safety, told the Washington Post that the agency is considering labeling and education efforts to better inform the public about the E. coli O157:H7 risk associated with mechanically tenderized steaks and other beef cuts.
The undersecretary’s comments coincide with an ongoing state and federal investigation of an E. coli steak outbreak associated with blade-tenderized steaks that the USDA says has sickened at least 21 people in 16 states. There are confirmed E. coli steak illnesses in Michigan, Colorado, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas and Washington.
The outbreak prompted a National Steak and Poultry E. coli recall of 248,000 pounds of steak, sirloin tips, beef medallions, boneless trim and other products that the USDA says were sold to restaurants and hotels across the country. The company has said the products recalled for possible E. coli contamination were primarily sold to Moe’s Southwest Grill, Carino’s Italian Grill and KRM restaurants in the six states where there are confirmed outbreak cases of E. coli.
The Post story quoted the USDA as saying the contamination “appears to have begun with tainted beef used for chopped steak that was “co-mingled” with other products” in National Steak and Poultry’s plant in Owasso, Oklahoma. Nine of the 21 people sickened in the outbreak have been hospitalized, the newspaper reported.
The restaurant steak E. coli outbreak and recall has triggered renewed calls by food safety organizations for USDA to mandate that the industry label beef cuts that are mechanically tenderized in any way — including with blades, needles or injections of brine and other flavorings. Fred Pritzker, founder of national food safety law firm Pritzker Olsen Attorneys, has been one of those voices — saying USDA didn’t go far enough in 1999 when it banned the sale of any mechanically tenderized beef cuts contaminated with E. coli O157:H7.
Pritzker said that’s because testing of so-called non-intact steaks is far from foolproof and without any written warning to consumers that a cut of beef has been mechanically pierced, most people assume it is intact and can be safely cooked rare or medium. But it can’t. Mechanical tenderization drives surface E. coli into the meat center, where it can survive unless cooked well. On intact cuts of beef, flames and heat readily kill E. coli because it’s on the meat surface.
Tags: e coli oubreak, e. coli steak
