Are you concerned about the safety of meat?

Beef industry gets a closer look as story of paralyzed woman hits the press
Sarah GilbertSarah Gilbert RSS Feed
Oct 5th 2009 at 6:30PM


Food safety expert Dr. Jeffrey Bender says mildly, "ground beef is not a completely safe product." The understatement is not lost on The New York Times, whose hugely popular, endlessly retweeted and emailed article on ground beef safety Sunday points out the "restrained" enforcement of safety procedures by the USDA.

The article tells the story of children's dance instructor Stephanie Smith, who was paralyzed after eating tainted beef at a Sunday dinner with her family in September 2007. Smith, 22, was taken to the hospital five days after the family dinner, "in excruciating pain" that a doctor described as worse than childbirth. (Smith wouldn't know; she hadn't yet started a family of her own.)

Smith was having so many seizures that doctors had to put her in a coma and fly her to the Mayo Clinic, where her mother worried she wouldn't live out the year. Scientists ended up tying 11 cases in Minnesota to hamburgers manufactured by Cargill and marketed as American Chef's Selection Angus Beef Patties. Four of the 11 sickened developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a condition which can affect kidney function. In the worst cases, the colon wall is penetrated, impacting blood vessels and causing clots that can lead to seizures. This is what happened to Smith, and her coma lasted nine weeks. When she woke up, she couldn't walk. Her doctors say she'll probably never walk again.



After the E. coli outbreak that sickened Smith, the USDA did spot checks at 224 plants, only to discover that nearly a quarter of them had "serious safety problems" -- they weren't even following the safety plans the plants themselves devised. The USDA allows this, as well as allowing grinders to decide whether they want to test for harmful bacteria before or after grinding beef; beef suppliers prefer having the meat tested after it's ground and combined with other companies' beef, since it keeps their exposure to recalls low.

The reaction of consumers reading the article has not been mild. Among my friends and social media contacts, those who read the long and sordid tale of the lax food safety bureaucracy and the tangled weave of questionable meat that goes into our hamburgers swore off the stuff for good. Those of us who've long chosen only meat from very small, sustainably-managed ranchers are wiping our brows in relief.

Health: Tainted Meat - nytimes.com/video