Iowa E coli Restaurant Issue Defies Common Sense
In a public debate in Iowa that defies common sense, some legislators are considering exempting an old-fashioned restaurant in Marshalltown from safe food handling requirements.
Taylor’s Maid Rite makes sandwiches with loose ground beef, sloppy joe style. Against state health code, the Marshalltown restaurant places raw ground beef in the same vessel holding cooked meat that is scooped onto sandwiches.
Even though the CEO of Maid-Rite Corp. says the old-time method is unsafe, the owner of the Marshalltown Maid-Rite is asking to be exempt from having to convert to a method that would prevent E. coli cross-contamination.
One of the restaurant’s advocates is Representative Mark Smith, a Democrat from Marshalltown, who says he eats at the restaurant frequently. The chain has a long history dating to the 1920s and has not been connected in the past with any ground beef E. coli outbreak.
But quaint notions about preserving old-fashioned kitchen methods are foolish when E. coli contamination is even a remote possibility. E. coli O157:H7 is nothing to toy with. The pathogen kills an estimated 60 people a year in the United States and ground beef is the most common vehicle for transmission. Restaurants don’t control the slaughter process that leads to E. coli contamination in beef and even if every batch of meat is tested for the pathogen, tests are not foolproof.
Even when death is not the outcome, more than 5 percent of the approximately 70,000 people a year who fall victim to E. coli infection develop a complication known as HUS E. coli, or hemolytic uremic syndrome. The microbes of E. coli emit a powerful toxin that attack red blood cells and HUS commonly results in kidney failure and can cause paralysis, stroke, heart problems and other long-term health problems. Children are more likely to become victims of HUS E coli than adults.
E. coli infection also is associated with a similarly dangerous condition known as thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura , or TTP, more common in adults.
Iowa legislators should listen to the scientific advice of state health officials who have testified against the measure that would allow this dangerous set-up at certain Maid-Rites to continue.
Tags: e. coli ground beef, e. coli hus
