Out of today's newspaper:

E.coli found; beef recalled

WASHINGTON - A Canadian company is recalling 73,800 pounds of ground beef and ground beef chuck distributed in the United States after regulators found the deadly e.coli pathogen in samples, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday. IBP Inc., which owns the distribution company Lakeside Packers in Alberta, issued the recall. The imported beef was produced July 19 in Canada. It is packed in 10-pound packages. The packages under recall are marked with a code of 003800210, followed by five more characters. (July 19th - that's almost three weeks ago.)

As someone noted on the earlier post about recalled hamburger, he grinds his own from meat cuts. He knows what is going into the hamburger and knows his equipment is sanitary. Lehman's carries several sizes of meat grinders. Before the local supermarket was bought out by a larger chain on Monday mornings they would take somewhat aged beef cuts, marked them down 50% and place them at a certain spot in the case. Was still very usable meat, just didn't look up to par.

-- Ken S. (scharabo@aol.com), August 10, 2000

Answers

Ken, perhaps someone should stop you newspaper subscription. Just kidding. I really do appreciate your posts. I haven't kept up with all of them like I'd like to because of being too busy, maybe someone else has asked this or maybe I'm just too cynical. We never heard of e-coli a few years ago. When you listen to the news they "always" have something on about the latest cancer or hearth attack cause. "Do this and the next day oh no don't do this any more" then the next day "oh it's o.k. to do this again. Is this a conspiracy or what-brain-washing? I know what some of my friends have to "say" about this kind of stuff, but what is your opinion and others on here. We have some really deep thinkers and people that can express themselves very well on the forum(not me, I have two too many learning disabilities). What do you think about "let's control the people, make them think they can't think for themselves"? from the news media and other power hungry types.

-- Cindy (atilrthehony_1@yahoo.com), August 10, 2000.

I worked in a supermarket meat dept. for a couple of years while in college. Not all of them are bad, and each has different "rule" for making burger. In ours, we weren't allowed to "recycle" old meat from the case to grind up. We got specific packages of meat for grinding (these days meat shops get large packages of specific sections of beef to finish butchering, vs. whole cattle). The only thing we added was extra fat if the grind called for it. Every batch was tested for fat content. Even though everyone wanted extra-lean burger, our chain once did a blind taste-test of the different percentages, and the 70% lean won just about every time. Those meat recalls are almost always (I haven't seen a different one yet) for pre-packaged meat products. Personally I would never buy a tube of hamburger. If you're worried about your burger, have a talk with your store's meat department manager. Find out how they grind their burger. If you don't like their answer, go elseware.

-- Chris Stogdill (cstogdill@rmci.net), August 10, 2000.

Cindy:

I cannot answer your last question except to say the media lives or dies by readership/viewers and the way to build that is through sensationalizing anything they can.

On the bad for you/OK for you topic, it is sometimes called the Cry Wolf Syndrom (spelling?). Eggs are bad for you due to cloesterol, but then it turns out it is 'good' cloesterol. Coffee is bad - then OK. Alcohol is bad, but then a moderate amount may be helpful. After a while people simply stop listening.

-- Ken S. (scharabo@aol.com), August 10, 2000.

Since E. Coli is only a serious threat to the elderly, sick, or very young, perhaps that explains why we are only now hearing oodles about it. It's only been in the last few decades that we have sustained such a large and appearently stable populations of older folks, and because of medical progress, many sickly folk and children that are less than vigorous have been not only saved, but their lives have been extended beyond the "natural" time that they would have survived without these progressive techniques. Therefore, we now have a rather large population of people who are at serious risk for E. Coli- related sickness and death. In healthy adults and older children, it produces an uncomfortable, but rarely deadly, bout of "stomache flu" and would have been shrugged off as "something I ate". Most of us who have ever been food poisoned have probably had a run-in with the bacteria unknowingly.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), August 10, 2000.

you guys are llllloooooosssssssseeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrsssssssss the Kanuchs screwed up again-no big deal but you don't need to write about it.

-- Nun yo Business (yomama@aol.com), January 29, 2001.

I agree its sensationalizing by the media, fully supported by the government. Likely theory is they want to scare the populace enough to allow them to nuke all the meat, so they can effectively use up the waste from their delightful nuke plants.

My understanding is e-coli lives within all our intestinal tracts in small amounts; that thorough cooking kills it dead; and that certain spices/herbs also decrease its numbers to almost nil (garlic and cinammon come to mind; cant remember the others)

And Chris......hey! My processor packages all my organic direct- market Dexter ground beef in tubes! Never had a whisper of a complaint.

-- Earthmama (earthmama48@yahoo.com), January 29, 2001.