E. coli cases up: Reporter looks at 10-year history of E. coli in ground beef
Reporter Bill Hord with the Omaha World-Herald took a look into E. coli contamination in ground beef on the ten-year anniversary of Hudson Foods' recall of 25 million pounds of ground beef for E. coli contamination.
A lot has happened since the largest ground beef recall in U.S. history, including a significant decline in E. coli contamination and illnesses. Since 1996, E. coli cases have trended downward, but in 2004 and 2006, E. coli cases are back up.
In April, the United States Department of Agriculture began testing beef trimmings - the meat that goes into ground beef - for E. coli contamination. The testing is done before trimmings leave the slaughterhouse to be processed at a grinding operation. In addition:
USDA investigators recently began thorough investigations of a meatpacking plant's procedure when any meat tests positive for E. coli."We want to make sure it's an isolated incident and not a problem with the plant's procedures," Raymond said.
Packing plants also are encouraged to hold onto ground beef until E. coli tests are returned and are confirmed as positive, Raymond said, a process that could take a day. The USDA offers to cut back on some of its other inspections if plants agree to wait for results.
The demise of the Hudson plant in 1997 can be attributed to the company's practice of carrying over ground meat from the end of one shift to another, meaning that the contaminated meat could not be traced back to just one day's grinding.
Today, large grinding companies make sure that each lot of meat is kept separate from another so that one positive test for E. coli would not result in multiple days' product being recalled or destroyed.
E. coli outbreaks traced back to ground beef continue to happen, but the significant decline in illnesses is a tribute to the industry's efforts to clean up. The recent up-tick in E. coli cases traced to contaminated produce are cause for concern. Like the beef industry, the produce industry must implement an effective industry-wide approach at curbing E. coli contamination to keep the number of cases - and outbreaks - down.
