Ground beef E. coli Traceback Investigations To Get Tougher Under USDA Initiative
TheUSDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is poised to implement new, more aggressive traceback procedures when meat samples at grinding plants test positive for E. coli O157:H7.
Currently FSIS acknowledges that its traceback investigations are less robust when there is no outbreak of illness associated with a positive test result at a further processing plant.
FSIS said its plan is to speed up and expand efforts to find the original source of contamination and any other contaminated products when E coli O157:H7 is found in routine ground beef testing.
Under the new protocol, traceback investigations will begin immediately when FSIS gets a preliminary or “presumptive” finding of E. coli in routine testing of ground beef. That will provide investigators a two-day jump. The current approach is to wait 48 hours for the presumptive test to be confirmed.
“We intend to identify all affected product and the potential suppliers earlier in the process and to respond more rapidly to protect the public health,” FSIS official Judy Riggins said at the meeting.
Riggins said that if the sample of contaminated ground beef included materials from several suppliers, inspectors will go to all suppliers.
Dr. Daniel Engeljohn of FSIS said at the meeting last month that the issue is the degree to which the agency traces the source ofE. coli when samples test positive.
“It is a difference in how we do it with an investigation related to illness,” Engeljohn said. ” What we announced today is a substantive change to more thoroughly investigate traceback to the slaughter supplier more so than what we do today.”
The change, however, will not stop Montana Senator John Tester from proceeding with a bill that would require the FSIS to trace E. coli contamination to the original source — not just the butcher shop or processing facility that sold trimmings to a grinding plant. He has maintained that investigations stop before they get to the original slaughter facility where E. coli most likely was introduced.
E. coli O157:H7 is a dangerous human pathogen that grows harmlessly in the guts of cattle. The organisms exit in manure that can lodge on an animal’s hide. At slaughter, it can flake off the hide and contaminate meat. It’s also possible for E. coli to splatter onto cuts of meat if intestines are cut.
Cooking meat to 160 degrees kills E. coli, but temperatures don’t always reach that high inside a ground beef hamburger or meatball, especially when hamburgers are cooked on a grill. Color is not an indicator of doneness.
Once consumed, E. coli O157:H7 microbes emit a powerful toxin that causes extremely painful stomach cramps, nausea, fever and diarrhea, often bloody. In five to 15 percent of cases, patients develop life-threatening hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) orthrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP). In a given year, about 60 Americans will die fromE. coli and more than 70,000 are hospitalized.
