E coli Steak Recall Affected Applebees Olive Garden Moes Carinos 54th Street
A spokeswoman for Applebee’s restaurants has confirmed to Nation’s Restaurant News that the National Steak and Poultry (NSP) company’s E. coli steak recall included Applebee’s, a chain with more than 2000 restaurants.
This is what Applebee’s spokeswoman Nancy Mays told the magazine: “As a customer of NSP we took immediate action when learning of this recall. Any product that had potential to be affected was removed from restaurants.”
Olive Garden restaurants, owned by Darden, also is on the record as being a customer affected by the steak E. coli recall that was first announced on December 24th as primarily affecting only three chains: Moe’s Southwest Grill, Carino’s Italian and 54th Street Grill and Bar restaurants. The amount of boneless sirloin steak, sirloin tips, medallions, beef trim and other products recalled totaled 248,000 pounds.
USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) said the problem was discovered in an investigation of anE. coli O157:H7 outbreak that was infecting restaurant diners in multiple states. The latest information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is that 21 confirmed illnesses have occurred in 16 states, including nine patients who required hospitalization and at least one who contracted life-threatening hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). No deaths have been reported.
The greater food safety community in the United States has been frustrated with the lack of disclosure over which restaurant chains — whether it be Applebee’s, Olive Garden or what not — were involved in this outbreak. The manufacturer was the only initial source of information about which chains were involved as recipients of recalled meat and that information has proven incomplete because the company’s official E. coli steak recall omitted Applebee’s and Olive Garden.
When products contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 and other dangerous human pathogens are sold to grocery stores — for instance — the USDA publishes a comprehensive list of stores and retail chains known to have received recalled items. But in the case of restaurants, there are regulations that prohibit the government from getting involved in identification — not even to disclose which chains are involved.
National food safety lawyer Fred Pritzker said this prohibition must be lifted to infuse greater transparency into the supply chain that we all rely on for our nutrition. “People have a right to know if the steak they ate at a restaurant was potentially laced with bacteria that could make them seriously ill or even kill them,” said Pritzker, whose firm was the first organization in the country to announce that health investigators were probing a restaurant E. coli outbreak associated with mechanically tenderized steak.
CDC spokeswoman Arleen Purcell-Pharr told reporter Alan Liddle of Nation’s Restaurant News that the outbreak appears to have peaked in November, with a few more onsets of illness occurring in December. She said the onset dates have ranged from Oct. 3 to Dec. 14.
According to the CDC, the states in which E. coli cases have been confirmed are California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Washington.
Steak Safety: The Straight Story
E. coli in steak: What you need to know
Is it always safe to eat a steak served rare? Seems like a simple question.
But a Dec. 24 National Steak and Poultry recall of almost 250,000 pounds of blade-tenderized beef forced consumers and health officials to reevaluate the question—especially after government agencies associated the recalled beef with 21 cases of E. coli in 16 states.
Typically, ground beef comes to mind when considering meat that could be tainted with E. coli. But this outbreak involved blade-tenderized, or what health officials call “non-intact” beef, which included steaks, beef medallions and sirloin tips. “Blade-tenderized” or “non-intact” refers to meat that has been punctured with needles or blades to break down the tissue and make a tougher cut of muscle more tender. Any pathogen (like E. coli) on the surface of the beef is normally killed in the cooking process if the beef is intact. But the mechanical tenderization process drives pathogens inside the beef. If it isn’t cooked until the internal temperature reaches at least 140 degrees, the beef could still contain the pathogen.
Government officials and industry groups offer mixed advice on what consumers should do. The National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods determined in 2002 that non-intact beef can indeed harbor infective amounts of E. coli, but that following the 140-degree rule will put you in the clear. A 2002 risk assessment by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) concluded there is almost no difference in risk of illness from intact versus non-intact steaks.
And yet there have been several E. coli outbreaks since then involving mechanically tenderized meat. This has put the spotlight on the issue of labeling. If non-intact steak must be cooked a certain way to guarantee its safety, then shouldn’t consumers have the right to know whether their steak is intact so they can cook it accordingly? That was the recommendation issued in a 2005 study by the Minnesota Department of Health following a 2003 outbreak of E. coli associated with blade-tenderized frozen steaks sold by door-to-door salesmen. In light of the National Steak and Poultry outbreak, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro called for labeling of non-intact steaks, stating “USDA has been aware of the E. coli risks associated with mechanically tenderized steaks as early as 1999, but has refused to act…consumers should be made fully aware of the products they are receiving so they can assure that they are cooked at the appropriate temperature.”
Furthermore, does this mean every time we eat at a restaurant, we should order our steak cooked to an internal temperature of 140 degrees? The National Restaurant Association in 2000 decided that restaurant patrons asking for rare- or medium-cooked steak should be informed that non-intact steaks should be cooked to at least 145 degrees to ensure safety. But when is the last time your server told you that?
No Steak E. coli Restaurant List Frustrates Food Safety
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.
Attorney Fred Pritzker Calls on Fairbank Farms to Compensate E. coli Victims
A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of a child who was sickened by E. coli O157:H7 against Fairbank Farms, an Ashville, New York firm that recalled over 500,000 pounds of ground beef products on October 31, 2009. The Fairbank Farms lawsuit was filed in Massachusetts.
To date, CDC reports 26 cases of E. coli O157:H7 associated with the recalled Fairbank Farms ground beef products. The states involved in this outbreak include California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
Attorney Fred Pritzker, a national food safety lawyer, calls on Fairbank Farms to pay the medical expenses incurred by these E. coli victims:
“Eating a hamburger should not be a high-risk activity,” said Pritzker. “This outbreak was preventable. Fairbank Farms should take responsibility for the harm caused by its ground beef products and immediately pay the medical expenses of those sickened while legal cases are being resolved.”
Health officials found E. coli O157:H7 in ground beef recovered from an infected person’s home that matched the outbreak-strain of E. coli O157:H7 that sickened people in this outbreak, according to the CDC:
Health officials in several states who were investigating a cluster of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses, with isolates that match by “DNA fingerprinting” analyses [PFGE analysis], found that most ill persons had consumed ground beef, with several purchasing the same or similar product from a common retail chain. At least some of the illnesses appear to be associated with products subject to these recalls. A sample from an opened package of ground beef recovered from a patient’s home was tested by the Massachusetts Department of Health and yielded an E. coli O157:H7 isolate that matched the patient isolates by DNA analysis.
E. coli O157:H7 emits a powerful Shiga toxin that attacks red blood cells in humans. Its effects can range from mild gastrointestinal discomfort to death and people who have weakened or underdeveloped immune systems — especially children under 5 and adults over 60 — are most vulnerable.
Two people have died in this outbreak, and 16 people have been hospitalized. Of those hospitalized, three developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS. This is a life-threatening complication of E. coli O157:H7 infection that kills more than 4 percent of its victims. Even when it’s not fatal, patients often suffer life-long health consequences. HUS is the leading cause of kidney failure in children in the United States.
“The people sickened in this outbreak and their families should not be burdened with medical bills while Fairbank Farms fights over other issues, such as compensation for pain and suffering,” stated Pritzker. “Paying the medical expenses immediately is the least Fairbank Farms can do.”
Pritzker Olsen is one of the few law firms in the United States that practices extensively in the area of E. coli litigation. For more information, call 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or email Attorney Fred Pritzker.
E. coli O157:H7 in Leafy Greens: How Does it Get There?
By Fred Pritzker
It’s relatively easy for the general public to understand the sequence of an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak involving ground beef, but scientists are still studying how the pathogen finds its way from the stomachs of cattle and other hooved animals into fields of vegetables, causing widespread E. coli outbreaks involving lettuce, spinach, tomatoes and other fresh produce.
A study of E. coli O157:H7 contamination in the watershed of the Salinas Valley — otherwise known as America’s salad bowl — offers some interesting insights. It was submitted in October 2007 by nine researchers from the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, California’s departments of environmental protection and health services and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration with help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For background, more E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks are linked to ground beef than they are to vegetables. In the case of beef, the bacteria enter packing plants on the hides of cattle or they are accidentally released during slaughter, landing on the surface of primal cuts. If the cuts are ground into hamburger, the pathogens can survive all the way to a person’s dinner plate if an individual patty isn’t cooked at its center to at least 160 degrees.
Between 1995 and 2006, 22 produce outbreaks E. coli O157:H7 were documented in the United States, with nearly half traced to lettuce or spinach grown in California — mostly in the Salinas Valley. The researchers in the October 2007 study spent 19 months sampling water, soil, plants, feces and sediment throughout the Salinas Valley watershed. They found E. coli O157:H7 at least once in 15 of 22 watershed sites. They found that the incidence of E. coli O157:H7 “increased significantly” when heavy rains caused an increase flow rate in the rivers.
But the study didn’t decipher new risk factors. For instance, researchers weren’t sure if the higher prevalence of E. coli after rains was related to flow rates stirring up E. coli O157:H7 in the sediment of rivers and creeks or if the increased number of positive test results was caused by run-off from grazing areas adjacent to streams and rivers. Even then the researchers were surprised to find that certain strains of E. coli O157:H7 wouldn’t migrate more than 100 yards from a known hot-spot of E. coli. But other matching strains of E. coli O157:H7 were found more than 30 kilometers away from each other.
Overall, the researchers concluded that the incidence of E. coli O157:H7 in the environment in the Salinas Valley is dynamic and not reasonably predictable.. For instance, while the highest incidence of E. coli O157:H7 was detected after rains, the researchers also found evidence of the pathogen making appearances during drought periods. The researchers said it was possible that the micro-organism could travel in the valley in clouds of dust from areas were cattle graze.
The writer, Fred Pritzker, is founder and president of Pritzker Olsen attorneys, a national food safety law firm representing E. coli victims and victims of hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS – a severe complication of E. coli O157:H7 infection that can cause permenant health damage or death in young children, the elderly and people who have weakened immune systems. For more information or to reach an E. coli attorney at the firm, call 1-888-377-8900 (Toll Free).
