Tag Archives: ground beef

Bacteria found in meat

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Ground beef

Ground meat is very versatile. We can shape it into burgers, meatballs, and meatloaf. It can be stirred into chili and pasta sauce or stuffed into peppers, lasagna, and tacos. Americans like it so much that in 2021 alone, we purchased more than $13 billion worth of ground beef, turkey, pork, and chicken. But there’s a problem.

While meat increases the risk of many diseases, meat, especially ground meat, also often carries bacteria that can make you sick – or worse!

To assess the current safety of the nation’s ground meat supply, Consumer Reports recently tested 351 packages of ground beef, pork, chicken, and turkey purchased at stores throughout the country. Almost a third of the ground chicken packages they tested contained salmonella. They also found salmonella in a few samples of ground beef, pork, and turkey. To make matters worse, every single strain of salmonella was resistant to at least one antibiotic. We’ve written about the problem of antibiotic resistance developing in farmed animals before. That problem doesn’t seem to have gone away.

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Bacteria Pervasive in Hamburgers

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Ground beefThe burger test results are in. Researchers bought enough ground beef to make over 1,800 quarter pounders from markets all over the country. Every single burger, without exception, had potentially disease-causing fecal (yuck!) bacteria in it.

It’s getting really bad out there in the meat world. As if that weren’t bad enough, sixty percent of samples had E- Coli, including the much feared 0157 E-Coli, as well as other toxin-producing bacteria. Several other kinds of bacteria were present as well. For instance, ten percent of samples contained Staph Aureus, bacteria which produces a disease-causing toxin that even the usual cooking won’t destroy.

Even worse, 18% of the burgers had antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Even the sustainably-raised burgers had lesser, but still substantial, amounts. That means that if you get sick from these burgers, when the doctor treats you with one or more kinds of antibiotics to fight them, they won’t work.

Choosing sustainably-raised beef won’t help much. Both conventionally raised or “factory farmed” burgers, and so called sustainably-raised burgers were contaminated with fecal bacteria, although the sustainable beef (such as organic and or grass fed) did have lower, but still considerable, rates of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The list of reasons behind the bacteria in the burgers is a long one, but it includes unhealthy conditions on the farms, unsavory things in the cow feed such chicken droppings, and even pieces of slaughtered hogs, contamination of the slaughterhouse machinery, inadequate inspection, a too-fast slaughter rate, resulting in stressed workers and inhumane conditions for cows.

Total beef consumption in this country is currently 4.6 billion pounds, and ground beef accounts for half of that. The study was conducted by Consumer Reports, which suggests considering alternate options. We couldn’t agree more. There are so many safer and delicious veggie burgers to try.

Beyond Pink Slime

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Oh yuk! There’s something called pink slime in hamburgers and we’re feeding it to our kids at school! In response to a large number of grossed out parents and the general public at large, a growing number school districts, restaurants and grocery stores are rapidly removing hamburgers and ground beef which contain pink slime from their offerings. Pink slime is the common term used to describe cuttings and scrapings of meat often taken from the less appetizing parts of the cow and then treated with the harsh chemical ammonium hydroxide to kill the bacteria it usually contains.

While we have no problem with removing pink slime from the burgers, there are much more serious problems with the common hamburger that can’t be so easily fixed, and which harm us much more than just making us hold our noses and saying yuk. Ultimately there is no such thing as safe meat. Meat is loaded with cholesterol and saturated fat, not to mention E. Coli and other pathogens that can cause serious illnesses. Let’s take a look at some of them and ask ourselves why, given the problems they cause, we still have hamburgers on the menus at all.

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