Tag Archives: Hamburger

Evidence-based eating

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I don’t care what adults choose to eat, smoke, drink or derive pleasure from; I do care when it affects kids, and that’s why many such activities are regulated based on age. For public health, it’s about reducing societal risk. For individuals, it’s balancing risk with choice.

But choice should be based on credible evidence.

Medium-rare hamburger is not the same as a medium-rare steak.

Robert Belcham arm-chair risk modeler and owner of ReFuel Restaurant in Vancouver, one of the few Canadian establishments to offer burgers to order, told the National Post the risk of his medium-rare hamburgers containing personally sourced meat, dried and ground fresh daily, is no greater than a medium-rare steak.

Show me the data. The difference is that meat, no matter how lovingly it is cared for and slaughtered, is prone to poop, somewhere, and when grinding steaks or other cuts, the outside becomes the inside.

Meat is just one offshoot of the Church of Raw, which sees nature as benign and good. I see nature as awesome and a great teacher, but also as an entity that is too busy to worry solely about the welfare of humans. Me say, fire is good.

The term pink burger is used throughout the article to denote a medium-rare burger, yet it has been known for almost 20 years that the color of meat has little to do with its actual temperature (and bacteria-wasting capabilities). Hamburger can appear brown but be woefully undercooked.

Hamburgers, more so than most illness-prone foods, remain subject to an odd double standard. Raw sushi remains largely unregulated. Any Ethiopian restaurant worth its salt offers gored gored (raw beef) and this month, Toronto’s prestigious Royal York Hotel is hosting the Great Toronto Tartare-Off, a showcase of raw minced steak mixed with raw egg. “Somehow, somewhere along the way we’ve been conditioned to think that if you see pink in a burger it means someone’s trying to kill you,” said Donald Kennedy, manager of the Victoria, B.C.-based Victoria Burger Blog.

That’s because people – especially kids – routinely get sick from undercooked hamburger and raw milk. Some die. An Iowa public health type wrote recently that “feeding unpasteurized milk to infants constitutes child endangerment.” Hardly the perfect food.

The line offered by one restaurateur, “I’ve served probably 100,000 burgers and nothing’s happened,” is commonly heard by food safety types from farm-to-fork, and underlies the why people and institutions underestimate risk. Those operating the BP Gulf oil well, the space shuttle Challenger, and Maple Foods meat slicing operations all saw warning signs, but were comforted by the quaint notion that, we did things this way before and nothing happened, so probably something won’t happen today. Food is part of the biological world and is constantly changing.

I’m not here to preach; lots of people do risky things, especially me. What individuals do with their raw meat in the privacy of their own homes is their own business: until it involves children. Or fairytales.

Faith-based food safety still dominates. But, as Lyle Lovett sang 15 years ago, “If a preacher preaches long enough, even he’ll get hungry too.”

What does pink mean? It’s a lousy measure, so why does CDC use it to measure hamburger risk?

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(although imperfect)

Those words, in parentheses, are the most important in a paper by CDC-types about self-reported consumption of pink beef, and impair the conclusions.

Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control used FoodNet data from a 2006-2007 survey of 8,543 respondents to conclude 75.3% reported consuming some type of ground beef in the home, and of those respondents who ate ground beef patties in the home, 18.0% reported consuming pink ground beef.

That’s a high number, but is pink hamburger correlated with cooking temperatures of less than 165F? Not always.

For purposes of the paper, pink hamburger is equated to undercooked and therefore potentially dangerous hamburger, except for the acknowledgement that color is an “imperfect” indicator for the consumption of undercooked ground beef.

The authors do mention in the paper that “color is not a reliable indicator of ground beef doneness, and thermometer use was not assessed so self-reported consumption of pink ground beef may not truly represent consumption of undercooked beef.

A series of studies beginning in the 1990s and led by Melvin “Hunter” Hunt of Kansas State University concluded that color is a lousy indicator of whether hamburger has reached a microbiologically safe internal temperature of 160F with something like 30 per cent of burgers browning prematurely, based on levels of different forms of myoglobin within hamburger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture agrees, and has a thorough summary of the problems with color at http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/Color_of_Cooked_Ground_Beef/index.asp.

So why base a consumer study on color, which research concludes and U.S. and Canadian governments agree in the form of consumer advice, is unreliable? Guess it was easier.

The survey did further verify a long-standing observation that is apparently ignored by every local, state or federal agency that says rates of E. coli O157:H7 increase in summer months because more people barbeque: there’s no correlation with cooking. Instead, the correlation is with microbial loads in cattle, which increase in spring and summer.

“We noted a distinct lack of seasonality in the consumption of ground beef or pink ground beef patties in the home. This contrasts with the marked seasonality reported for E. coli O157:H7 infections in humans, which peaks in the summer months. These data suggest that factors other than seasonality in ground beef consumption, such as differences in food handling practices or increases in the amount of bacterial contamination on meat and other foods or environmental sources during warmer months, are responsible for the seasonal increase in E. coli O157:H7 infections. Shedding of E. coli O157:H7 by cattle peaks during the spring and summer months, corresponding to the period of the highest incidence of human infections. Others have suggested that fluctuations in E. coli O157:H7 prevalence in cattle may be linked to human infections. Our data support this hypothesis and suggest that further attention to pre-harvest food safety interventions may be warranted to decrease the numbers of organisms shed in cattle feces and, ultimately, decrease the number of human infections."

For those who think consumers need to be better educated to reduce incidence of foodborne illness, the survey found yet another link to trash such a notion.

“Although persons with higher education and income reported consuming pink ground beef patties in the home more often, this group consumed ground beef overall less frequently. These findings do not explain these patterns, but we speculate that the increased level of risky behavior among more highly educated and higher income respondents may be due to several factors. These persons may not prepare food at home as often as other groups and
therefore may be less practiced in appropriate safe food handling and cooking practices or they may prefer pink ground beef. Higher income persons have been shown both to have more confidence in the safety of the national food supply and to be more likely to use unsafe food practices than lower income persons. Persons that are more educated may also perceive themselves to be at less risk for foodborne illness and consequently be more likely to engage in risky behaviors. The increased willingness among this population to engage in unsafe food-related behaviors has been suggested to rise from more prevalent beliefs that they understand and can control food safety risks.”

Or, smart people can be dumb. Certainly applies to me (the dumb part).

The abstract of the paper is below.

Ground beef consumption patterns in the United States, FoodNet, 2006 through 2007
Journal of Food Protection®, Volume 75, Number 2, February 2012 , pp. 341-346(6)
Taylor, Ethel V.; Holt, Kristin G.; Mahon, Barbara E.; Ayers, Tracy; Norton, Dawn; Gould, L. Hannah
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2012/00000075/00000002/art00016/
Infection resulting from foodborne pathogens, including Escherichia coli O157:H7, is often associated with consumption of raw or undercooked ground beef. However, little is known about the frequency of ground beef consumption in the general population. The objective of this study was to describe patterns of self-reported ground beef and pink ground beef consumption using data from the 2006 through 2007 FoodNet Population Survey. From 1 July 2006 until 30 June 2007, residents of 10 FoodNet sites were contacted by telephone and asked about foods consumed within the previous week. The survey included questions regarding consumption of ground beef patties both inside and outside the home, the consumption of pink ground beef patties and other types of ground beef inside the home, and consumption of ground beef outside the home. Of 8,543 survey respondents, 75.3% reported consuming some type of ground beef in the home. Of respondents who ate ground beef patties in the home, 18.0% reported consuming pink ground beef. Consumption of ground beef was reported most frequently among men, persons with incomes from $40,000 to $75,000 per year, and persons with a high school or college education. Ground beef consumption was least often reported in adults ≥65 years of age. Men and persons with a graduate level education most commonly reported eating pink ground beef in the home. Reported consumption of ground beef and pink ground beef did not differ by season. Ground beef is a frequently consumed food item in the United States, and rates of consumption of pink ground beef have changed little since previous studies. The high rate of consumption of beef that has not been cooked sufficiently to kill pathogens makes pasteurization of ground beef an important consideration, especially for those individuals at high risk of complications from foodborne illnesses such as hemolytic uremic syndrome.

Innovation stumbles; perception prompts burger chains to ditch food safety product pink slime

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“It’s just a shame that an activist with an agenda can really degrade the safety of our food supply.”

That’s food safety guru David Theno, who is credited with turning the Jack in the Box burger chain into a model of food safety after an E. coli outbreak in 1993, commenting on the demise of pink slime, also known as ammonium hydroxide.

McDonald’s and two other fast-food chains have stopped using an ammonia-treated burger ingredient that meat industry critics deride as “pink slime.”

The product remains widely used as low-fat beef filling in burger meat, including in school meals. But some consumer advocates worry that attacks on the product by food activist Jamie Oliver and others will discourage food manufacturers from developing new methods of keeping deadly pathogens out of their products.

The beef is processed by Beef Products Inc. of Dakota Dunes at plants at Waterloo, Iowa, and in three other states. One of the company’s chief innovations is to cleanse the beef of E. coli bacteria and other dangerous microbes by treating it with ammonium hydroxide, one of many chemicals used at various stages in the meat industry to kill pathogens.

“Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold at the cheapest form for dogs, and after this process we can give it to humans,” Oliver said in a segment of his ABC television show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, that aired last spring.

BPI, which once boasted of having its product in 70 percent of the hamburger sold in the country, has lost 25 percent of its business. McDonald’s has been joined by Taco Bell and Burger King in discontinuing use of the product, and the company is worried other chains and retailers will follow them.

Lean beef long has been added to fattier meat to produce the blends of hamburger meat that’s sold in supermarkets and restaurants. BPI’s innovation was to develop high-tech methods of removing bits of beef from fatty carcass trimmings that had previously been sold for pet food or animal feed and then treating the beef with ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria. Ammonia is used extensively in the food industry and is found naturally in meat. The gas BPI uses contains a tiny fraction of the ammonia that’s used in household cleaner, according to the company.

Theno, who has consulted for BPI, called the process “extraordinarily effective” in making beef safer.

Two years ago, Beef Products Inc. took a fairly public hit when the N.Y. Times and several scientists questioned the efficacy of the company’s use of ammonia as an antimicrobial treatment for ground beef.

But in 2010, BPI founder and chairman Eldon Roth announced the company will post on its Web site 100 per cent of its results from the processor’s testing for E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella.

"We’re going to be 100 percent transparent," Roth told Meatingplace in an interview following the announcement. … We’re not promising to be perfect, but I will promise that we will be better.”

In July, 2011, BPI won further praise for expanding its E. coli O157:H7 test-and-hold program in lean bean to six additional shiga-toxin producing strains of E. coli.

We don’t need no education: burger preparation, what consumers say and do in the home

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I cringe when someone says, ‘food safety is simple.’

A review of existing studies by the U.K. Food Standards Agency found that, although people “are often aware of good food hygiene practices, many people are failing to chill foods properly, aren’t following advice on food labels and aren’t sticking to simple hygiene practices that would help them avoid spreading harmful bacteria around their kitchens.”

Yes, individuals are impervious to risk; been known for decades.

And there’s that word, ‘simple’ again.

I especially cringe when someone says, ‘cooking a hamburger is easy with these simple food safety steps.’

Ho Phang and Christine Bruhn report in the current Journal of Food Protection that in video observation of 199 California consumers making hamburgers and salad in their own kitchens, handwashing was poor, only 4% used a thermometer to check if the burger was safely cooked, and there were an average of 43 cross-contamination events per household.

There’s some good data in the paper about what consumers do in their own kitchens, and the results are an additional nail in the self-reported-food-safety-survey coffin: people know what they are supposed to do but don’t do it.

But what the paper doesn’t address is how to influence food safety behaviors. Instead, the University of California at Davis authors fall back on the people-need-to-be-educated model, without out providing data on how that education – I prefer compelling information – should be provided.

The authors state:

• educational materials need to emphasize the important role of the consumer in
preventing foodborne illness and that foodborne illnesses can result from foods prepared in the home.;

• the gap between the awareness of the importance of hand washing and the actual practice of adequate hand washing should be addressed by food safety educators.

• food safety educators should address the lack of reliability of visual cues during cooking (stick it in — dp);

• food safety educators should emphasize faucet cleaning with soap and water as a way of preventing cross-contamination; and,

• ignorance about food irradiation point to a further need for education.

The authors do correctly note that program to promote the use of thermometers when cooking burgers, initiated by the introduction of Thermy in 2000, has not been successful. So why do more education?

And the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers happened in Jan. 1993, not 1994 as stated in the paper; someone should have caught that.

Burger preparation: what consumers say and do in the home
01.oct.11
Journal of Food Protection®, Volume 74, Number 10, October 2011 , pp. 1708-1716(9)
Phang, Ho S.; Bruhn, Christine M.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2011/00000074/00000010/art00017
Abstract:
Ground beef has been linked to outbreaks of pathogenic bacteria like Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella. Consumers may be exposed to foodborne illness through unsafe preparation of ground beef. Video footage of 199 volunteers in Northern California preparing hamburgers and salad was analyzed for compliance with U.S. Department of Agriculture recommendations and for violations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Food Code 2009. A questionnaire about consumer attitudes and knowledge about food safety was administered after each filming session. The majority of volunteers, 78%, cooked their ground beef patties to the Food Code 2009 recommended internal temperature of 155°F (ca. 68°C) or above, and 70% cooked to the U.S. Department of Agriculture consumer end-point guideline of 160°F (ca. 71°C), with 22% declaring the burger done when the temperature was below 155°F. Volunteers checked burger doneness with a meat thermometer in 4% of households. Only 13% knew the recommended internal temperature for ground beef. The average hand washing time observed was 8 s; only 7% of the hand washing events met the recommended guideline of 20 s. Potential cross-contamination was common, with an average of 43 events noted per household. Hands were the most commonly observed vehicle of potential cross-contamination. Analysis of food handling behaviors indicates that consumers with and without food safety training exposed themselves to potential foodborne illness even while under video observation. Behaviors that should be targeted by food safety educators are identified.
 

600 sick from salmonella in hamburgers: a cohort study in Poitiers, France, Oct. 2010

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 In Oct. 2010, a massive outbreak of Salmonella enterica serotype 4, 5, 12: i- sickened about 600 students in schools in Poitiers, France. For that many students to get sick, there was a massive contamination, probably coupled with massive failures in storage and preparation. At the time, there was extensive criticism regarding the failure to communicate the severity of the outbreak (in a Cool hand Luke sorta way, see clip).

These issues are not discussed in a new report by the Institut de Veille Sanitaire, but the epidemiological investigation is presented.

In October 2010, a salmonella outbreak occurred in schools in Poitiers. Salmonella enterica serotype 4, 5, 12: i- was isolated from stool samples of the first cases. Environmental investigations identified frozen beef burger meat from a single brand served in schools as the cause of the outbreak and food trace-back investigation led to identification and recall of beef burger. We conducted an investigation to assess the extent of the outbreak in the schools of Poitiers.

We conducted a retrospective cohort study. A self-administered questionnaire was filled by students and personnel attending the four exposed schools with cases. Clinical cases were defined as anyone reporting diarrheal or fever with at least one digestive sign within 5 days after school meal. We computed relative risks (RR) with their 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) and used the proportion test.

We identified a total of 554 cases (544 adolescents and 10 adults) of the 1559 responders (response rate 86%) who ate at school on the day the burger meat was served. The overall attack rate was 36,5%. Attack rate was significantly lower for one school (17%, p <0,01) compared to the three others. Adolescents (<20 years) were at greater risk than adults to develop signs (RR= 2,3; 95%CI 1,3-4,2). A total of 286 cases (53%) sought medical care, of which 31(6%) were hospitalized >24 hours. Concentration of salmonella in burger meat varied between 270 and 18,000 CFU/g³.

The serotype 4,5,12:I was associated with a severe outbreak, the largest salmonella food borne outbreak ever documented in a school setting in France. Quick identification and recall of incriminated batch is crucial to limit extension of outbreak.

Thanks to Albert Amgar for passing along the report.

No confusion here: cook ground beef to 160F

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 As a Canadian citizen with permanent U.S. residency living in Australia, I get confused.

Even with a language professor by my side, I can barely understand a damn word anyone says – especially the Canadians.

Fellow Queenslander Pat Dignam also appears confused when he writes in the Irish Times that food irradiation “is routine in some countries, including the U.S., so eating rare hamburgers there is safe.”

No. A small fraction of American ground beef is irradiated, and almost none of that is available at retail or food service.

Mr. Dignam is correct when he says, “During the butchering process, the surface of cuts of meat may become contaminated with bacteria, notably E. coli, from the intestines of the animal (regardless of the standards applied by the farmer and butcher). Cooking an intact piece of meat on the surface is sufficient to kill any such bacteria. However, when a piece of meat is minced, contamination on the surface can be spread to any part of the product. … Irish mince is not irradiated, so the process of cooking through is crucial. E. coli infection can be fatal, so anyone who wishes to eat rare or raw minced beef in Ireland should take note of these facts.”

Well said, except for the U.S. bit. And things get confusing when intact cuts like steaks are needle-tenderized.

The facts are ground beef in the U.S. needs to be cooked to 160F (71C) as verified by a tip-sensitive digital thermometer.

Stick it in.

Burger King bolstering food safety after failed inspections

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 A week after Washington State health types made Burger King Corp. aware of a problem with its burger cooking process, the company says that it’s inspecting its systems on the West Coast to determine what changes need to be made.

Most of the undercooking was due to problems with a flame broiler and employees failing to discard undercooked patties.

Susan Shelton, environmental health specialist for the Benton Franklin Health District, said the problem in a nutshell was one of being unfamiliar with the new technology.

"It wasn’t cooking to temperature because there were a lot of controls. When we started working with them, it was resolved."

The health district received no complaints about undercooked food or illnesses, and no lab samples were positive for bacteria or other illness-causing contaminants, she added.

Human tooth found in hamburger in France

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A human tooth was found in a burger made by Bigard in Quimperlé, sold by a supermarket in Angers, France.

Nathalie Dayiot discovered the tooth crown was in a burger prepared by a friend at his home in Angers. He bought it in trays guaranteed "100% muscle" in the Grand Carrefour Maine Angers. "I felt something hard, says the young woman. I spit. It was a tooth on a pivot."

Romuald Gross, who made the purchase, has every intention to complain to the Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and Fraud.

The hamburgers were manufactured at Bigard in Quimperlé. The consumer advocate, Mr. Julien Roulleau, said two of the four who had attended the lunch were victims of food poisoning recorded this morning by their doctor, following the consumption of hamburgers. "The remaining burgers were seized by the DGCCRF. Beyond the problem of the tooth, it is important to know if the lot was consumed," said Me Roulleau.

Carrefour’s management promised an internal investigation and states that "the traceability of the product was traced back to the supplier concerned and to the manufacturing site."
 

Perfect burger BS

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There is so much crap on the Internet.

Ozersky.tv has some dude claiming to make the perfect burger; it’s a perfect example of microbial cross-contamination as he handles the meat and then everything else.

Ozersky likes his burgers medium-rare and pink in the middle; crustry throughout, with no temperature verification and a side of dangerous microorganisms.

He also uses slices of Velveeta because it melts at room temperature.
 


How to Grill the Perfect Burger — powered by ehow

Would you eat a burger made from poop? Do you already?

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There’s a lot of talk about hamburgers in the run-up to Father’s Day and most of it is crap.

Literally.

Someone in Japan made a hamburger out of human poop, the use-a-piece-of-metal-and-sear-your-tongue method of checking whether a burger is done is making the rounds, and someone else says 120F beef is safe.

The poop burger is the safest choice.

Because if you’re going to eat poop, at least cook it (and try not to cross-contaminate the kitchen).

My Health News Daily reports today researchers in Japan have synthesized meat from proteins found in human waste.

"In the food safety world we say, ‘don’t eat poop,’" said Douglas Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University. "But if you’re going to, make sure it’s cooked."

The Japanese researchers isolated proteins from bacteria in sewage. The poop-meat concoction is prepared by extracting the basic elements of food — protein, carbohydrates and fats — and recombining them.

The meat is made from 63 percent proteins, 25 percent carbohydrates, 3 percent lipids and 9 percent minerals, according to Digital Trends. Soy protein is added to the mix to increase the flavor, and food coloring is used to make the product appear red.

The researchers came up with the idea after Tokyo Sewage asked them to figure out a use for the abundance of sewage in mud, Digital Trends says.

Powell is not familiar with the researchers’ method, but said he guesses that they are first heat-treating the sewage before they reap its resources.

"Theoretically, there’s nothing wrong with this," Powell said. "It could be quite safe to eat, but I’m sure there’s a yuck factor there," he said.

However, Powell said there is the potential for cross contamination in the laboratory where the poop meat is made. That’s why it’s a good thing the meat will eventually be cooked.

But what if the final product was not going to be cooked?

"I wouldn’t touch it, " Powell said.

Pass it on: Meat made from poop is safe, but you should cook it before you eat it.