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Fecally-infected Meat

zenffzenff Veteran
edited September 2013 in Diet & Habits
Meat is often infected with fecal matter.
http://www.nltimes.nl/2013/09/04/often-fecal-bacteria-in-meat/

The cause is cost-effective production-methods and cutting on the costs of supervision.

If you don’t eat it raw and if you don’t eat from the plate that the raw meat was on you’ll probably be fine. But don’t be sloppy or you’ll be eating E.coli and running for the toilet.

Comments

  • CittaCitta Veteran
    edited September 2013
    So are 30% of prepared salads sold in supermarkets. And they are much more likely to be eaten raw.
    And in the UK there have been several well documented outbreaks of E Coli from vegetables grown on organic farms. Its the manure. Shit-lettuce.
    Victorious
  • Jus' to add to this i know someone who works in a biscuit factory and he told me they sell their cut offs to kebab factories as a bulking agent. I mean i know kebabs are probably the worse type of food but jus' thought i would share my interesting fact.
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    edited September 2013
    Moderator Note:

    Kindly watch your language. Profanities are not necessary, particularly as other words are available.
    If it's referred to as 'Fecal' then I suggest you do the same....


    Secondly, this is nothing new.
    It is quite natural for meat to have faecal matter on it, as the intestines when removed from animals, do occasionally spill, either through the natural cuts made to remove the intestines, or through accidental damage or tearing of the intestines.
    The internal surfaces are then washed through a high-pressure water hose.

    Once the meat is processed and prepared for sale, the surface area affected is actually relatively small, and usually poses no health threat to the human consumer.
    Bacteria are usually surface-dwelling and are killed by cooking.
    Minced meat is a different matter, as surface meat is minced, and combined into the mixture, and can therefore be present throughout the meat.
    All minced meat should be thoroughly cooked and not served pink, or rare.
    Steaks can be served rare as penetration by the bacteria into the interior of the steak, is virtually zero....

    I learnt all this through my Health & Safety Food Hygiene course.
    This is scaremongering.
    As usual, it also bears noting that they mention that the vulnerable may be susceptible to being affected. As usual, again, it's the young, elderly or pregnant. The normal bunch who are warned in any 'safety/health scare' sensationalist articles.
    Those in good health, not coming in under those categories, are perfectly safe.
    VastmindMaryAnne
  • VastmindVastmind Memphis, TN Veteran
    edited September 2013
    Here...we eat the intenstines. They're called chitterlings/chitlins.
  • Vastmind said:

    Here...we eat the intenstines. They're called chitterlings/chitlins.

    My grandmother loved them. And pigs feet.
  • VastmindVastmind Memphis, TN Veteran
    edited September 2013
    ^^^ I only do the once a year holiday serving of chitlins....then I know
    who cleans them and how well, hahaha.
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    The British have become overly fastidious about offal, to the extent that most people either regard offal with distaste, or recoil in horror.

    Both ridiculous reactions, because offal is actually an extremely healthy source of fat-free protein, and is often more nutritious than the main product we refer to as meat!
  • seeker242seeker242 Zen Florida, USA Veteran
    Chicken is even worse, in the USA at least. Consumer Reports 2010 study found 66% of it to be contaminated. And more than 50% of the contamination was found to be resistant to one or more antibiotics... :eek2:
  • NomaDBuddhaNomaDBuddha Scalpel wielder :) Bucharest Veteran
    edited September 2013
    zenff said:

    Meat is often infected with fecal matter.
    http://www.nltimes.nl/2013/09/04/often-fecal-bacteria-in-meat/

    The cause is cost-effective production-methods and cutting on the costs of supervision.

    If you don’t eat it raw and if you don’t eat from the plate that the raw meat was on you’ll probably be fine. But don’t be sloppy or you’ll be eating E.coli and running for the toilet.

    I bet that the slaughter houses in this article's case were kind of 'not-legal-yet-but-we're-working-on-it' , or the sanitary inspection vets are just snoring loudly on their posts.

    First of all every slaughter house functioning in the E.U. has to respect some standards regarding :
    - the reception of the animals ( which include one or two physical exams and a mandatory 'bath' )
    - the way the freshly blood-drained carcass is processed so that the organs ( especially the whole gastro-intestinal mass and/or 'high biological risk materials' ) are taken in a method that is quick and non-contaminating.
    -the way the carcass that was eviscerated, is inspected for parasites and then stored, and trasported.

    Taking one process at a time, I could say that some parts of the body MUST and VERY MUST pass through a solid sanitary exam by the hygiene vet. If those vets are sleeping, there you go, carcass contamination.

    P.S.: 1. I'm talking about these things in the way that I visited two slaughter houses in my country ( for my mandatory practice ) and happened to witness how animals are sacrificed. And the guide explained how the whole process works with all the details anyone could give. If you want me to detail, then ask, and I'll write the whole thing down.
    2. I know that what I've written here may sound harsh and cold...but that's the truth.
  • karastikarasti Breathing Minnesota Moderator
    In the past 10 years, the worst food borne illness outbreaks in the US were caused by the following:
    green onions
    Scallions
    Spinach
    Milk
    Chili Sauce
    Ground Beef
    more spinach
    Peanut butter
    Salsa with contaminated peppers
    more beef
    Cookie dough
    Eggs
    Cantaloupes
    Grape tomatoes
    Chicken Breast
    Strawberries
    Ground turkey
    Mixed bag salad
    Papaya

    So, of those, only 4 outbreaks were due to meat.
  • I have eaten raw mushrooms I picked myself that have been growing directly out of fecal matter and didn't really wash them. Also, they had quite a few larvae inside which are harmless to us but leave behind a lot of fecal matter. And another thing, Bear Grylls has on several occasions taken fecal matter in Africa and squeezed the water out of it straight into his mouth. Finally a % of raw mushrooms you buy in the super market or market will have fecal matter on them.
  • ThailandTomThailandTom Veteran
    edited September 2013
    @vinyln back over to this thread. If you like mushrooms and live in the US then watch this short video, the 9 other foods featured may surprise you as well. Any vegans here like tomato sauce or 'ketchup' or beer? Enjoy.

  • karastikarasti Breathing Minnesota Moderator
    Factory farming increases the chances of ecoli and other such bacteria because the animals are not eating their natural foods. A lot of things though have fecal matter on them, but when you cook them it kills the bacteria. Most people use compost and manure on their gardens, which is nothing but rotted material and fecal matter, lol. Even our vet, who recommends a diet of 20-30% real food for dogs, says if you hunt the foot, you can feed it to them raw. If you buy it, you have to cook it because the transport time and the time for butchering and sitting waiting to get packaged greatly increases the bacteria in the meat. It's much more to do with the process of how/where we get our food (meat or otherwise) than it is exactly where it literally comes from.
    blu3ree
  • vinlynvinlyn Colorado...for now Veteran
    To be honest, most of the stuff in that video doesn't really bother me. The red food coloring is an issue. I like those sugar wafer cookies with the frosting. I stay away from the strawberry red ones because they literally turn my poop red...and that worries me for the cancer issue. Oddly enough, other red-colored foods never do that, but the cookies sure do.
  • karasti said:

    Factory farming increases the chances of ecoli and other such bacteria because the animals are not eating their natural foods. A lot of things though have fecal matter on them, but when you cook them it kills the bacteria. Most people use compost and manure on their gardens, which is nothing but rotted material and fecal matter, lol. Even our vet, who recommends a diet of 20-30% real food for dogs, says if you hunt the foot, you can feed it to them raw. If you buy it, you have to cook it because the transport time and the time for butchering and sitting waiting to get packaged greatly increases the bacteria in the meat. It's much more to do with the process of how/where we get our food (meat or otherwise) than it is exactly where it literally comes from.

    I have never been ill from wild mushrooms growing from manure and then eaten fresh/raw. There was one time where I was very hot but that goes without saying.

    About the uncooked meat, that makes a lot of sense. I saw a guy on TV once though who insisted on eating a 100% raw diet, even chicken. he on TV had a sealed pack of chicken breast and opened it up and ate it raw! He says that yes it kills harmful bacteria, but cooking also kills a lot of the nutrients and vitamins. I personally am not willing to take that risk with chicken, I do eat 90% of my vegetables raw though.

  • karastikarasti Breathing Minnesota Moderator
    I eat a lot of my veggies raw, too, though some of them will not release their nutrients for absorption by our bodies without being at least somewhat cooked. Mostly cruciferous veggies like leafy greens and broccoli. They have parts about that that are better received raw, and aspects better received somewhat cooked, generally gently steamed. Best to eat a combination of cooked and raw where those are concerned. I've seen people eat raw meat too, and I guess I just couldn't do it. Definitely not when bought from the store. They are just handled too much, placed on too many surfaces and so on. If you harvest the meat and butcher it yourself, then I could see it more. But the animal dies, the meat starts to deteriorate. There is a very limited time to butcher the animal to prevent spoilage from starting to set in.

    How much nutrient loss happens depends on how you cook it, too. Grilling actually changes the structure of the meat if you cook it to the point of having any char on the surfaces. Not a good thing. Grilling is fine, just not to the point the meat has charred portions. But if you buy your food from a normal store, whether it's meat or veggies or fruit, a ton of the nutrition is already lost. Most veggies lose 75% of their nutrients within the first 5-7 days of being picked and most of the stuff at typical stores was picked 10-14 days prior. In that case, flash frozen veggies actually have more nutrients than the fresh ones. That's why store bought veggies taste so different from fresh garden picked ones. The taste comes from the nutrients and by the time you get them they are no good despite how they look. Tomatoes are a prime example. Store bought tomatoes don't even compare to fresh picked, not even remotely.
    ThailandTom
  • DandelionDandelion London Veteran
    karasti said:

    In the past 10 years, the worst food borne illness outbreaks in the US were caused by the following:
    green onions
    Scallions
    Spinach
    Milk
    Chili Sauce
    Ground Beef
    more spinach
    Peanut butter
    Salsa with contaminated peppers
    more beef
    Cookie dough
    Eggs
    Cantaloupes
    Grape tomatoes
    Chicken Breast
    Strawberries
    Ground turkey
    Mixed bag salad
    Papaya

    So, of those, only 4 outbreaks were due to meat.

    I can quite believe it. The only times i've had a 'toilet nightmare', was from fruit and veg, never from meat.

  • karasti said:

    In the past 10 years, the worst food borne illness outbreaks in the US were caused by the following:
    green onions
    Scallions
    Spinach
    Milk
    Chili Sauce
    Ground Beef
    more spinach
    Peanut butter
    Salsa with contaminated peppers
    more beef
    Cookie dough
    Eggs
    Cantaloupes
    Grape tomatoes
    Chicken Breast
    Strawberries
    Ground turkey
    Mixed bag salad
    Papaya

    So, of those, only 4 outbreaks were due to meat.

    Yes but while vegetable-related illnesses were more common, they were not the most dangerous. The largest proportion of foodborne illness deaths — about one in five — were due to poultry. CDC estimated 277 poultry-related deaths in 1998-2008, compared to 236 vegetable-related deaths.



  • vinlynvinlyn Colorado...for now Veteran
    Although over 33 people died from the listeria in the cantaloupes here in Colorado from just one farm 2 years ago.
  • ArthurbodhiArthurbodhi Mars Veteran
    edited September 2013
    vinlyn said:

    Although over 33 people died from the listeria in the cantaloupes here in Colorado from just one farm 2 years ago.

    And still not more people die cause vegetable food illness in general.

    The most deadliest foodborne illness outbreak in the States was in 1985 in California when 47 or 52 people die from listeria in cheese.

    Is not the type of food, vegetable, animal, etc. that is more or less dangerous that other. Is the way that this is produced the principal cause that this infections spread.
  • vinlynvinlyn Colorado...for now Veteran
    Exactly. In the Colorado case, the farm had been inherited by the family's sons who decided to cut corners from the way their parents had traditionally harvested the crops.

    Having had food poisoning several times, I have learned to be very careful -- some say overly careful -- with any fresh meat or produce.
  • vinlyn said:

    Exactly. In the Colorado case, the farm had been inherited by the family's sons who decided to cut corners from the way their parents had traditionally harvested the crops.

    Having had food poisoning several times, I have learned to be very careful -- some say overly careful -- with any fresh meat or produce.

    Yep, and not only food, actually we have and Norovirus outbreak in a neighbor city spreading by water with more that 1000 people affected. Here all are a little paranoid buying bottled water and stuff knowing that none case is presented in our city, yet.
  • vinlynvinlyn Colorado...for now Veteran
    Yes, that was always an issue for me when I lived in Thailand -- buying bottled water! Unfortunately I knew someone who lived next door to one bottling plant, and he said that in busy times he would see workers filling bottle straight from the hose!

    Although it's less a problem now, in the 80s and 90s when I first started visiting Thailand, you would see them dragging -- along the sidewalks -- blocks of ice into restaurants and stands, which would then be chopped and shaved for use in sodas and other drinks! Think of what that piece of naked ice picked up while being dragged along the sidewalks in such a tropical country!
  • Don't take sh*t from nobody.
    ThailandTomzenff
  • Okay, I take the message. It’s not such a spectacular story as I thought and it’s not telling very much about meat.
    (By the way @federica the story was in our newspapers referred too as (maybe better translated) the “poo-meat affair”. But you moderated with good reason. You did a better job than the newspapers even.)

    The “problem” if there is any, is one of economic pressure on companies to skip or to be sloppy on costly health-safety measures. I think especially when the risks are moderate. When people drop dead after eating your product it will boomerang back on you. But you will get away with a few food-poisonings here and there.
    And every now and then there will be a scandal, like this tiny one, and unfortunately sometimes bigger ones.


    federica
  • There might be something to this though, as meat facilities in the US are pushing for fewer regulators and faster line production. Contaminated meat gets through USDA inspection system : wapo.st/18GLUpE
    side note, I got an ecoli infection as a child and remember the pain to this day. My younger brother nearly died from it. We were fairly certain it was from ground beef..but since there wasn't an outbreak, no investigation, theres no way to know what caused it. What if meat contamination is causing more isolated incidents which aren't recorded as such?
  • vinlynvinlyn Colorado...for now Veteran
    I also once had an E coli infection...from shrimp. Lost a lot of blood that night. Very scary.
  • Yeah bad stomach cramps, bleeding. Hard to forget.. my brother spent about 3wks in Denver childrens.
  • karastikarasti Breathing Minnesota Moderator
    I read something once that said a fair amount of people who think they have viruses really have food borne illness of some type. They just don't get as sick to think it's "food poisoning." It can come from anywhere, though. The only point of my post earlier was to point out that it's not just meat that should be villianized. It's the entire idea of mass producing food in our current system that is the problem. You are pretty unlikely to get it if you produced your own food. It's the nature of the system that encourages the spread of it.

    Have you seen the "movie" Samsara? Fascinating and horrifically sad at the same time. It's interesting, because when the producers approached US food factories to film, they all said no way. So they filmed factories in China (I think it was China) and they were happy to comply in order to show off how sterile and clean their factories were. The food system in the US at least is highly secretive and protected. Funny how that works. We have all sorts of "right to information"in all aspects of our lives...except our food.
    blu3reeoceancaldera207
  • vinlynvinlyn Colorado...for now Veteran
    Yes, very true, Karasti. I have my share of stomach/intestinal issues (e.g., colitis), and my doc once said that most people who have a "24 hour bug" actually have a mild case of food poisoning.
  • karasti said:


    Have you seen the "movie" Samsara? Fascinating and horrifically sad at the same time. It's interesting, because when the producers approached US food factories to film, they all said no way. So they filmed factories in China (I think it was China) and they were happy to comply in order to show off how sterile and clean their factories were. The food system in the US at least is highly secretive and protected. Funny how that works. We have all sorts of "right to information"in all aspects of our lives...except our food.

    Yes, is a very good movie. This movie don't make any judgments and let the viewers make their own.

    Also Baraka, by the same director is similar in this. Totally recommend to everyone.
  • karastikarasti Breathing Minnesota Moderator
    Yes, i enjoyed them both greatly. Samsara had a bit of a darker feel to me, and Baraka while it contained sad scenes as well felt more uplifting. But I agree, very well done to allow the viewer to take what they were going to get from both of them. Amazingly well shot and a lot of things to think about. Highly recommend them. Best Buy had Samsara on bluray for $10 last time I was there.
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