Because of that, it recommends cooking ground beef to an internal temperature of at least 160 degrees, whether sustainable or conventional.
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In 2014, Americans bought more than 2 billion pounds of ground from supermarkets and big-box retailers, but a Consumer Reports investigation found cause of concern. That’s up 8 percent from just a decade ago. The hamburger you’re grilling could contain harmful bacteria, and unless you cook it thoroughly, it could make you sick.
“Better ways of producing beef from farm to fork have real impact on the health and safety of our food and the animals themselves”, said Urvashi Rangan, Ph.D., executive director of the Center for Food Safety and Sustainability at Consumer Reports.
For the report, Consumer Reports purchased and tested 300 packages of conventionally and sustainably produced ground beef sold in stores around the U.S. The meat was tested for five common types of bacteria that can be found in beef: Clostridium perfringens, E. coli, Enterococcus, Salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus. In addition, 20 percent contained C. perfringens, the bacteria that causes nearly one million cases food poisoning every year. Sixty percent of samples had E. coli. “About 10 percent of the staphylococcus we found did have the toxin gene associated with foodborne illness”.
The tested meat was from both conventionally raised cows, which were fed grain, soy and antibiotics on feedlots, and cows raised in a “sustainable” environment, including those that were antibiotic-free, organic, and grass-fed.
Twice as many samples of conventional beef, or beef from animals that were given antibiotics, tested positive for “superbugs”, bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics, than antibiotic-free beef. In contrast, 9 percent of sustainably-produced beef tested positive for superbugs.
“There’s no way to tell by looking at a package of meat or smelling it whether it has harmful bacteria or not”, Rangan said. Meat industry stakeholders, on the other hand, are touting the study’s confirmation that pathogenic bacteria is rarely found in meat. “The beef industry in the US is safe”. “That has nothing to do with the farmer or the beef producer”.
“If all cattle were grass-fed, we’d have less beef, and it would be less affordable”, Mike Apley, chair of the Antibiotic Resistance Working Group at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, told Consumer Reports. Even better are organic and grass-fed methods. But if you cook your ground beef to the proper temperature of 160° Fahrenheit, you should be safe right? In middle school, I realized that all of the stringy bits of ground beef that look so orderly and neat at the deli counter could potentially be hundreds of individual cows.
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Most of the country’s beef is processed by four companies that can slaughter about 400 cattle an hour – meaning it’s hard for the US Department of Agriculture to adequately inspect all the plants, the magazine noted.
