Superbug in Supermarket Meats; CDC Says Don’t Worry
November 20th, 2008Supersize your Superbug Burger! Actually, it’s a Superbug Clone Burger now.
Via: MSNBC:
A potentially deadly intestinal germ increasingly found in hospitals is also showing up in a more unsavory setting: grocery store meats.
More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for Clostridium difficile, a gut bug known as C. diff., according to newly complete analysis of 2006 data collected by a University of Arizona scientist.
Nearly 30 percent of the contaminated samples of ground beef, pork and turkey and ready-to-eat meats like summer sausage were identical or closely related to a super-toxic strain of C. diff blamed for growing rates of illness and death in the U.S. — raising the possibility that the bacterial infections may be transmitted through food.
“These data suggest that domestic animals, by way of retail meats, may be a source of C. difficile for human infection,” said J. Glenn Songer, a professor of veterinary science at the Tucson school, who talked with msnbc.com about work now under review by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But specialists from the CDC and scientists who study C. diff said the connection between the presence of C. diff bacteria and infection has not been established and that there’s not enough evidence about food transmission to warrant public alarm.
“There are no documented cases of people getting Clostridium difficile infection from eating food that contains C. difficile,” said Dr. L. Clifford McDonald, chief of prevention and response for a division of the CDC. “However, because C. difficile has been found in some retail meats, that possibility does exist.”
Songer’s samples included brands sold in grocery stores across the nation. Contamination ranged from 41 percent of pork products and 44 percent of turkey products to 50 percent of ground beef samples and more than 62 percent of samples of braunschweiger, a type of liverwurst.
Nearly three-quarters of the C. diff spores were toxinotype V, a type linked to illness in pigs and calves and, increasingly, in humans, Songer noted.
Can you smell the conditioning: to love the Massive Animal Database and the mandatory RFID tagging of every livestock animal in the states for “public safety”?
Can you imagine the miniscule percentage of small farmers and landholders — getting even smaller?
Can you see where this is all headed?
Yup, it’s heading toward raise your own meat, or go without.
If you don’t know your farmer, you don’t know your food.
“…he connection between the presence of C. diff bacteria and infection has not been established…”
Sure, sure – can’t jump to conclusions. After all, its 1822 and Louis Pasteur’s just been born so hasn’t quite completed his work yet…