Ground beef & chicken are the riskiest meat & poultry products in the U.S. food supply, says @CSPII had no idea what CSPI is or how it came to that conclusion, but it appealed to my inner PH260 (principles of infectious disease) nerd & so when I got home from work that day, I followed the link on the tweet & downloaded the report.
To start off, I found out that CSPI stands for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Founded in 1971, CSPI is a 501(c)(3) non-profit consumer advocacy group that focuses on nutrition and food safety in the United States. Thank you, Wikipedia. [1]
In this report, CSPI compiled and examined 1714 food-borne outbreaks that occurred in the US between 1998 and 2010. [2] To make sure they can make a clear link between a particular meat product & an outbreak, the report only included outbreaks that were fully investigated by the CDC & were definitively linked to USDA-regulated meat & poultry products. Of all the outbreaks examined, 564 did not have a known etiology, or pathogen. Each of the 1700+ outbreaks were categorized into 12 groups according to its associated meat or poultry product. To determine the foodborne disease risk of each group, CSPI calculated a "severity score" which is equal to the sum of the number of cases caused by a particular pathogen multiplied by the CDC-defined hospitalization rate of that pathogen.
Severity score of a meat/poultry product = ∑(cases)i(hospitalization rate)iNow to to some results. At the top of the list with the highest severity score is chicken. Within the 12-year period examined, there were 452 outbreaks - totaling 6896 cases of illness - associated with this poultry. The most common pathogens found in chicken were Salmonella and Clostridium perfringens. Second on the list is ground beef with 336 outbreaks & 3800+ cases of disease. The most common pathogen associated with ground beef was E. coli O157:H7 which caused approximately 38% of all cases. Over the 12 years, outbreaks have led to the recall of over 70 million pounds of ground beef. At "high risk" are steak, beef (other), and turkey. At "medium risk" are deli meats, barbecue meats, pork, and roast beef. Finally, processed meats such as chicken nuggets, ham, & sausages are in the "low risk" category.
Most people - if not all - have experienced at least 1 episode of foodborne intoxication/infection & it is not fun. While most people get away with diarrhea and vomiting, many have been hospitalized & some have even died from ingesting contaminated or improperly cooked meat/poultry. I am a meat eater, I think meat is delicious, & reading this report is not going to stop me from eating meat. And it shouldn't stop you either, if eating meat is your thing. However, this report does remind me that I - along with other omnivorous & carnivorous human beings out there - should always make sure that my meat products are stored properly & that they are cooked to the right temperature. To take this 1 step further, it would be even better if we grind our own meat so we are assured that the end product we get started from a single source. It's not possible for a lot of people (me included) to grind their own meat; in that case, choose products that specify a single origin (e.g. ground from whole turkey breasts). I can't say these claims are 100% trustworthy, but that's a whole 'nother issue that I'm not prepared to tackle.
References:
[1] Wikipedia. Center for Science in the Public Interest. Accessed 1 July 2013.
[2] CSPI. Risky Meat: a CSPI Field Guide to Meat & Poultry Safety. Washington DC. 2013.
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