Eating Dangerously Page 19
These days, even though food safety officials are quite aware that manure contains potentially deadly pathogens, that doesn’t mean inspectors are checking organic farming operations on a monthly or even yearly basis to make sure they are properly sanitizing their manure before they toss it on as fertilizer. “Who knows whether the manure is reaching 165 degrees, and also, all it takes is a little piece,” said Jeff Nelken, a food safety expert whose company trains restaurants, grocery stores, and other retailers on how to protect against foodborne illness. “Nothing has shown that there is any less bacteria in organic.”3
Here is another cause for concern when it comes to choosing small, organic farms: some of the nation’s food safety rules apply only to farms with a certain herd size. The FDA’s 2009 “egg rule,” for example, applies to farms that have at least three thousand laying hens, not the little farmer with thirty hens who sells eggs at the local garden center. The rule requires testing the flock for disease, refrigeration, and safe transport, all intended to cut down on the risk of Salmonella bacteria. Salmonella infection can reside in a hen’s ovaries and get transmitted to the egg, usually in the egg white.
The egg rule requires all large egg producers that don’t pasteurize their eggs to adopt safety measures, which also include pest control programs—targeting rodents and flies that have access to feed troughs—and testing eggs and the chicken’s environment for bacteria, refrigerating eggs at the farm and during shipping, and not sending raw eggs to stores if Salmonella is found in the flock.4
Federal authorities estimate the egg rule will save numerous lives. Yet food safety advocates say the FDA could have spared many lives and illnesses already if the agency had not stalled on passing the egg rule, and if it had given it more punch.
British egg producers have been vaccinating their hens against Salmonella enteritidis for more than a decade, nearly eradicating those types of human illnesses in England from eggs. In 1997, the year vaccine trials began, there were 14,771 reported cases in England and Wales of Salmonella enteritidis PT4, according to a report by the New York Times. By 2009, there were only 581 cases, a 96 percent decline, according to data from the Health Protection Agency of England and Wales.5
But the FDA, in passing the egg rule in 2009, did not include flock vaccinations as part of the regulation. Federal officials said there was not enough evidence that instituting a vaccination program would cut down on human illness. The vaccination would have cost less than a penny per dozen of eggs.6
Many large egg producers in the United States vaccinate their hens even though it is not a federal requirement. But what about the people who don’t buy their eggs from a mass producer trucking them by the thousands to supermarkets across the nation? One argument on their side is that smaller, organic farmers pay more attention and take more care with their animals. Their farms and hen houses, one hopes, do not contain giant piles of animal waste that attract a larger-than-normal amount of mice and flies. They don’t pump their animals full of antibiotics to prevent them from picking up the kinds of diseases that spread rapidly in overcrowded quarters. Does that mean cage-free eggs are safer?
Not necessarily, said Michele Jay-Russell, program manager and research microbiologist at the Western Center for Food Safety at the University of California.7 “The data doesn’t show that there is any difference” between eggs from the grocery store or a backyard flock, said Jay-Russell, who keeps her own hen house and supports city ordinances making it easier for city folks to raise their own laying hens. “They do need to be aware that just loving them and feeding them organic food does not prevent them from having Salmonella,” she said. Jay-Russell recommends checking out whether an egg supplier has a clean coop with fresh food and water, whether there are signs of rodents, and whether the eggs are refrigerated after they are plucked from nests. “Whether it’s a big operation or a little operation, if they don’t have rodent control, they can run into problems,” she said.
It’s true eggs can sit at room temperature for hours and seem fine. Not so many years ago, supermarkets kept eggs at room temperature, not in the refrigerated section. But that was before scientists understood the growth patterns of Salmonella bacteria. “The chicken has a pretty high body temperature, even higher than humans, and the Salmonella likes the warm temperature,” Jay-Russell said. “That’s the ideal condition to grow. Refrigeration stops the growth.”
The more numerous the Salmonella bacteria on or inside the egg, the more likely it is that bacteria will cause an infection. Eggs sometimes are contaminated with Salmonella on the inside, which is why it’s recommended not to eat runny eggs or use raw eggs in cooking, such as in salad dressing or chocolate mousse. “There is a personal decision in all that,” Jay-Russell said.
Studies comparing cage-free, organically grown eggs to those laid by caged chickens in massive facilities are contradictory. A 1994 study from California found one type of Salmonella was found in just 1 percent of caged hens, compared to 50 percent of free-range hens. Other European studies have found the opposite.8
Of all the thousands of strains of Salmonella, the one most commonly found in eggs is called Salmonella enteritidis. The strain lives in the guts of healthy animals, especially poultry and rodents, and it can be carried by flies. It can hang out in dirt and chicken, turkey, or rodent feces, and then contaminate the surface of eggs. It can spread to the rest of the flock through contaminated food, wild birds, and rodents. It can even spread from one farm to another on a worker’s clothing, Jay-Russell said.
Since we’re talking about eggs, it’s worth knowing the difference between free-range and cage-free labels. Free-range means the chickens that laid the eggs had a bit of free time to wander outside but still could have spent much of their lives confined in barns. Cage-free means they were not confined to cages but still could have lived in close nesting quarters.
When it comes to that half-a-cow purchased from the rancher a few towns away, or the ham picked up at a nearby hog farm, treat them as if they are just as likely to contain bacteria as the beef and pork purchased at the grocery store. That means you must cook them well enough to kill any harmful pathogens. Get out the meat thermometer, again. Local meat is often butchered at a local shop, which could mean a smaller facility that might process one or two animals each day or only a handful each week. Studies show those smaller operations tend to have a slightly higher level of E. coli and other bacteria, said Dr. Dan Hale, a professor of agriculture science at Texas A&M University and a meat specialist.9 “The data would show that there is a low prevalence in both locations,” large or small, Hale said. “In reality, the very small facilities tend to be a little bit higher” when it comes to contamination levels. That’s because larger plants have a more sophisticated pathogen eradication program, he said.
Take Cargill Meats as an example. The company is now considered one of the top innovators in food safety after a 2011 ground turkey Salmonella scare that at the time was the largest poultry recall in American history. Cargill recalled thirty-six million pounds of ground turkey that was potentially contaminated.10 The company—which sells poultry, beef, and pork—ramped up its safety efforts after the recall scare.
“Food safety for Cargill food products is a top priority,” company spokesman Mike Martin said in a 2013 interview.11 “We understand that consumers expect to be able to purchase safe food. That’s something we are putting in our body. Nobody wants to make anybody ill from a product that is produced and marketed under their name.” But, he added, “We live in a world where these naturally occurring bacteria are ubiquitous in the environment. These are bacteria that are naturally and randomly occurring in nature. They are everywhere. They are in soil, water, animals, plants. The question is, how do you find them, rather than how does it happen. It happens naturally.”
Martin points out there are more than 2,400 strains of Salmonella hanging around the planet, and only a handful of them are harmful to humans.
The task of food producers is to track down what sometimes amounts to a small number of cells in a giant batch of ground meat or fresh greens. In the case of Cargill’s enormous recall, it wasn’t that all thirty-six million pounds of that ground turkey was contaminated, only that enough Salmonella cells were found in portions of the meat that the company had to recall entire lot numbers.
In the end, according to the CDC’s final report on the outbreak, 136 people from thirty-four states were infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella heidelberg. Almost forty were hospitalized. One died.12
Their cases were linked through DNA fingerprints after initial reports began pouring in from state health departments that people were falling ill from Salmonella. Interviews with ninety-four sick people revealed more than half of them recalled eating ground turkey in the seven days prior to the interviews.13 Investigators bought ground turkey from five grocery stores and soon found the Salmonella Heidelberg—all originating from Cargill Meat Solutions Corporation in Springdale, Arkansas.
The particular strain of Salmonella was cause for concern because it is resistant to multiple antibiotics. Testing found that the strains that had made it into people’s bodies because they ate the infected turkey were also resistant to some antibiotics. Fortunately, there were other available antibiotics that still worked.
A public health alert released in July 2011 warned customers to beware of fresh or frozen ground turkey and to cook it not just according to package directions, but to use a meat thermometer to make sure the meat reached 165 degrees. In August, Cargill recalled thirty-six million pounds of meat. The company says now that the outbreak, though devastating, pushed food safety efforts to a higher level.
Cargill’s process of finding those pathogens before they latch on for the ride to supermarkets, and your kitchen, has ramped up considerably in the last couple of years. The company’s meat, whether it’s pork, beef, or turkey, has numerous “hazard analysis critical control points” along the production route. The control plan takes into account how often knives are sanitized and even how many cuts are made on a carcass. As is required by federal law, USDA inspectors are on site whenever a plant is slaughtering animals.
For ground turkey, Cargill instituted a high-pressurization technique that disrupts the growth of bacteria. Ground turkey is put into a cylinder-shaped, high-pressure vessel. The temperature is elevated, and the pressure blows up Salmonella cells. The high-pressure processing came about after the massive 2011 turkey recall. The company also added extra washes and more third-party safety audits, Martin said.
Neither Cargill nor federal inspectors were ever able to determine the cause of the Salmonella outbreak. “We never have been able to track it down exactly, other than it came from the birds,” Martin said. “We’re not sure how it got to the birds.”
Like many meat companies, the animals used for Cargill’s operations are not necessarily raised by Cargill. The company owns about 12 percent of the cattle it harvests and 25 to 30 percent of the pork. As for turkey, Cargill owns 100 percent of the birds that end up in grocery stores, but the vast majority of them are raised by ranchers on contract with the company.14
Cargill anticipated a setback in its reputation in August 2011 with a nationwide apology. “It is disappointing when things like this happen, given the level of effort,” Martin said. “There was a pretty deep and sincere feeling of disappointment and concern and, to some degree, failure from the standpoint . . . that you never want to make someone ill from the food that you produce. It’s been frustrating not to be able to do the ‘CSI’ work that would lead us to the source.”
Cargill invested more than $1 billion in food safety in its North American operations over a decade. The company employs seven hundred people whose job, in some way or another, has to do with food safety. “It’s a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week, 365-day-a-year job,” Martin said. “We feel that we have to have that kind of commitment to it because the potential for making people sick is something we want to continue to reduce. There is no upside for food companies to have people become ill from eating food that we produce.”
The benefits of a large company such as Cargill are its relatively large budget for food safety and massive number of food safety scientists and technicians. The downsides, though, are also related to size, according to locavore enthusiasts. Unlike the family farmer down the road who sells his eggs and bacon directly to local customers, Cargill’s mass-produced products take a longer path to consumption—from the farmer on contract, to the plant, to the truck, to the supermarket. That disconnect, some believe, can have a negative effect on food safety because some of the accountability for the freshness and safety of the food has been removed.
Whether connection to community makes food safer—at least until more studies are done—is more of a feel-good idea rather than a scientific fact. The connection between food safety and the locavore eating trend is minimal. “If anything, it could be a negative,” said Dr. H. Russell Cross, head of the animal science department at Texas A&M University and former administrator of the USDA’s FSIS under presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.15
While large meat-processing plants are using high-pressure hot water or steam chambers and spraying organic acidic solutions, for example, smaller ones often use only the vitamin C sprays to help reduce bacteria on the carcass. Still, every plant—regardless of its size and unless it’s operating illegally, like in someone’s backyard barn operation—has a USDA inspector who is a veterinarian on site when animals are being slaughtered. For some, that means federal inspectors are there almost around the clock. For others, that means someone from the USDA stops by for a few hours each week during the killing process. Inspectors also must check on the processing operation, whether it’s making sausage or grinding burger.
The USDA’s food safety inspection program has more than ten thousand employees, including up to about eight thousand who are inspectors. Those eight thousand inspectors are in charge of checking on about six thousand processing plants. Contrast that with the FDA, which had 2,800 food-related staff to oversee 350,000 food makers. “If we really did the right thing, we would scrap both of those acts and write a new one that covers all food, and based on risk reduction,” Cross said. The FDA inspection program is a “reactionary” one, he said. “They usually don’t go get engaged until something goes wrong.”
The USDA’s inspection program is robust in comparison, Cross said. A meat-processing inspector must first see the animal alive, observe it get up and move. Any that look sickly are sent to a “suspect” pen for further observation. After the animals are killed, inspectors look at their organs and glands to make sure they are healthy. The meat then goes through pathogen kill process that typically involves steam, hot water pasteurization, and acidic acid or lactic acid sprays.
While A&M’s Cross and Hale emphasize that the majority of meat is safe, they also push what many in food safety call the “three Cs.” That’s keep it cold; don’t cross-contaminate raw meat with other foods in the shopping cart, refrigerator, or kitchen; and cook it well. Hale is one of the rare people who uses a meat thermometer all the time. He uses one in his burgers and in his eggs. “And I’m not a hyper-clean guy. I’m not OCD,” Hale said. A particular study from Kansas State University sticks in his mind as he reaches for his meat thermometer.16 The study found that a thermometer is the only reliable way to tell for sure that harmful bacteria has been cooked enough. Just because a hamburger is no longer pink on the inside doesn’t mean it reached 165 degrees. Just because an egg is no longer runny doesn’t mean the Salmonella in it has been killed. And just because the juices run clear when the chicken is stabbed with a fork doesn’t mean it’s done. Remember this, whether you are filling your basket at the farmers’ market, picking up your annual half-cow, or selecting your meat at the supermarket meat counter.
“I’ve talked to a lot of consumers who think that if it’s organic, they can
almost eat it raw,” Hale said. And that, clearly, is not the case.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that not only should you cook organic meat or handle organic veggies the same way you do conventionally grown meat and produce, you should not assume that what you buy at the farmers’ market is organic. In fact, it might not even have been grown locally or by the farmer whose stand is set up at the market to pass out slices of melon.
In 2011, strawberries purchased at farmers’ markets and roadside stands in Oregon sickened fifteen people, including one who died, with E. coli O157:H7. It turned out the strawberries were grown by a farm in Newberg, Oregon, then sold to buyers who resold them at roadside stands and farmers’ markets.17
Tracing the contaminated berries back to the farm was complicated. Almost all of the patients with identical strains of E. coli recalled eating strawberries from roadside stands or local farmers’ markets, but that didn’t immediately lead to the farm. Once the berries were on display at produce stands, there was nothing to tell them apart from berries from any other farm.18 When investigators did find the farm, they also found deer tracks and droppings, which they suspected as the source of the E. coli contamination.
Farmers’ markets are exempt from the Food Safety Modernization Act, signed into law in 2011. That’s because the regulation does not apply to farms that sell less than $500,000 in food annually and sell directly to customers or restaurants within 275 miles or less from the farm.19 Most safety experts aren’t suggesting people avoid farmers’ markets, just that consumers become educated about the risks. It’s the responsibility of local health departments, already overburdened by restaurant inspections, to check on farmers’ markets. That typically amounts to a walk-through to make sure foods sold from crepe or soup stands are heated properly. Yet many of the nation’s outbreaks are caused by fresh produce, mainly leafy greens, berries, and melons—a farmers’ market’s main attractions.