The potentially deadly E. coli bacteria strain that prompted the closing of Hudson Foods Inc.’s ground beef plant earlier this month can be eliminated from beef carcasses treated in a steam cabinet heated to 180 degrees.
Several of the company’s biggest meat processors have the Frigoscandia Steam Pasteurization System in their plants, but its $1.1 million price tag makes the massive machine prohibitive for the run-of-the-mill meat company. The American Meat Institute says 30 percent of the meat processed in the U.S. is steam-pasteurized.
Some leaders in the meat industry believe this method should be the standard tool to eliminate pathogens from the meat supply. Other health experts are urging the U.S. to follow the practice of countries abroad and irradiate meats to kill contaminants.
The arguments on this issue have heated up considerably since the recent outbreak of illness in Colorado caused by E. coli O157:H7 and traced to Hudson’s plant in Columbus, Neb. At the insistence of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Hudson shut down its plant and recalled 25 million pounds of meat. The USDA policy calls for “zero tolerance” of this E. coli strain, and all suspected meat must be destroyed.
After the plant’s biggest customer, Burger King, said it would no longer buy Hudson’s patties, the plant was sold to giant meat processor IBP Inc.
Hudson and USDA inspectors agree that the tainted meat was contaminated when it arrived at the plant. Hudson bought beef from as many as a dozen different slaughterhouses.
The incident highlights the wide range of facilities that produce the country’s meat, and the difficulties the government has overseeing the products that reach dining room tables and the millions of food service outlets that feed increasing numbers of Americans each day.
A look at beef processing at Emmpak Foods Inc. in Milwaukee shows the complexity of the process.
Said Justin N. Segel, Emmpak’s chief executive, pointing to the dirt-and-manure-covered hide of a 1,000-pound cow hanging from the ceiling, “It’s a big challenge to go from that to the clean carcass you see at the end of the process.”
Eighteen hundred cattle are slaughtered in his plant a day.
Emmpak is a vertically integrated company that slaughters, cuts, grinds and cooks beef products for food service customers. It is the largest supplier of ground beef patties to Burger King restaurants; the company processes 6 million pounds of ground beef per week.
Slaughter facilities of different sizes use a variety of measures to rid carcasses of possible contaminants. There is no national standard and no government-mandated practice, but federal inspectors watch operations at all slaughter plants.
At Emmpak, the workers use a series of the most common techniques and finish with the steam pasteurization cabinet.
The E. coli contaminant that is getting so much attention now was an unknown entity until 1982, and scientists still do not know how the strain mutated to its current dangerous state.
The organism lives in the intestines of healthy cattle, and there are two points in the slaughtering process where fecal contamination can take place, according to animal science experts. The first is when the viscera are removed from the animal. If the intestines are accidentally punctured–this is called “splitting a gut”–the contents contaminate what otherwise is a naturally sterile interior.
The second point is when the hide is stripped from the animal.
After the cows at Emmpak are stunned and their aortas are cut to drain the blood, the internal organs are removed and hides are peeled off.
At this stage, workers and the eight federal inspectors on site scan the animals for specks that could be a contaminant.
They trim any such area from the animal and throw the trimmings in steel gutters on the floor. The trimmings are disposed of each day.
“We throw away 60,000 pounds of trimmings a week,” Segel said.
The inspectors have the right to slow down the line or stop it altogether if they see a problem. They could recommend getting rid of part of the animal to prevent contamination from proceeding down the line, or instruct an employee on the correct way to trim.
After the animals are trimmed, three workers use hand-held steam vacuums to remove visible dirt or debris from the hanging carcasses, which move along on automated ceiling tracks. According to the American Meat Institute, about 80 percent of the more than 800 cattle slaughterhouses in the U.S. use these vacuums.
The carcasses then move through a high-pressure water wash, another technique that is typical in the industry.
At Emmpak, the carcasses then move–four at a time–into the steel steam cabinet that blasts them for seven seconds. The computer-controlled machine shows the temperature surrounding each animal, and if it does not reach 180 degrees, the carcass goes through again.
“The virulent pathogens are extremely heat-sensitive,” Segel said. “E. coli O157:H7 will almost instantly die at 160 degrees.”
Then a cool shower prepares the carcass to hang in a 34-degree storage room before it is trimmed and packaged or ground.
“We decided as a company to take the food safety issue to the max,” Segel said. “But the meat that leaves here still requires proper handling. We need to attack this problem and create awareness from the farm to the table.”
According to the 1996 USDA report, 812 plants slaughtered at least one head of cattle, and 13 plants slaughtered over 45 percent of the total of 36.6 million head. Total beef production was up 1 percent from 1995, to 25.5 billion pounds, the highest level since 1976.
“There have been so many changes in society and the food business in the last few decades that impact food safety,” said Susan Brewer, associate professor of food science and nutrition at the University of Illinois. “Food processing has become very centralized. There used to be a dairy in every town. But because of more and more safe processes and better transportation, we can centralize and distribute very widely. But it also compounds the safety problem. In the old days, a butcher would kill one cow and grind it up and sell it to people in the neighborhood. If there was a contamination problem, it would be confined to that town. Now, if the same cow goes to a centralized processing plant it is ground up and mixed in with five tons of hamburger and distributed nationally, the impact is much greater.”
To help better control these problems, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said Friday he would propose a bill giving the department the authority to shut down plants and fine them for violations. The bill also would expand the department’s ability to deny inspection to plants with willful or repeated violations.
The USDA has been operating under food inspection regulations that date back to 1906, and since the 1993 outbreak of E. coli-related disease at Jack in the Box restaurants in Washington state, it has tried to make the control of food-borne illness a top priority.
The Clinton administration has twice before asked Congress for more enforcement authority for the USDA.
Under the new regulations, all slaughter plants have been required since January to conduct microbial testing for generic E. coli, the species that commonly is found in the intestinal tract of food animals.
But obviously, in the case of the still-unidentified slaughterhouse that supplied tainted beef to Hudson, this test does not catch everything.
And E. coli is not the most prevalent food contaminant. Salmonella in meat, poultry, dairy products and eggs causes as many as 4 million infections each year, according to the USDA. Another bacterial pathogen is Campylobacter, which has been linked to raw or undercooked chicken.
The demand for ready-to-eat refrigerated products has given rise to the prevalence of another pathogen, Listeria, which can replicate at refrigeration temperatures. Listeriosis, the disease that results from exposure, can–like E. coli contamination–be severe in children, elderly people and pregnant women, who could suffer spontaneous abortions.
Even under the new USDA system going into effect next year that is much more stringent than the current food safety rules, the burden is on producers to develop their own systems to meet the standard.
And the burden of self-protection is on the consumer.
“The consumer has to realize that there is no way that we can create a pathogen-free food supply,” said Tom Carr, a professor of animal science at the University of Illinois.
“The consumer is the last line of protection. The processor can do all these positive things, but if the food is not properly handled at home, there could be food-borne illness.”
