The Overlooked, Undercooked, Threat

In the United Kingdom, Mad Cow disease infected almost 200,000 cows.  It almost destroyed the beef industry of the entire country.  It is a disease that is feared by both governments of United States and Canada.

There is a disease in America, however, that poses an even greater threat then Mad Cow disease.

In the time that it took for a strain of Mad Cow disease to kill 129 people in the United Kingdom, an overlooked contaminant in the American food supply killed over 400 people. 

The Center for Disease Control estimates that in United States, this disease kills 61 people, and sickens 73,000 men, women and children each year. 

This disease transmits easily between people; especially family members and child care workers.

This disease can contaminate drinking water, rivers, lakes and swimming pools.

This disease causes severe and even bloody diarrhea.  It can lead to kidney failure. In fact, it is the number one cause of kidney failure in children.

There is no known cure or treatment for this disease.

What is the primary cause of this frightening disease?

Beef.

Undercooked, ground beef.[1]

The beef and dairy cow carries the bacteria that causes far more death and illness than almost any other food born illness in America. 

Escherichia coli O157:H7 is the bacteria’s name.  There are many strains of bacteria commonly referred to as E. Coli.  This one, however, is toxic to humans.

Unlike the deadly prion, this E. Coli strain doesn’t harm the animal it was created in.  The cattle that carry it remain healthy.  They quietly are stripped of their milk, or head off to the slaughterhouse to be killed for their meat.  Pasteurization supposedly kills the E. Coli present in milk, but raw meat is not processed that way.  It is shipped off to the supermarket or restaurant with the dangerous E. Coli still living within it.

E. Coli food poisoning was first diagnosed in 1982, when many people suffered bloody diarrhea after eating hamburgers. 

The case of the outbreak was linked to a bacteria only found to exist in the intestinal system in cattle.  Since its first discovery, this strain of E. Coli has caused hundreds of death, and possibly millions of illnesses in North America alone.

Children are the hardest hit by this sickness.  The bacteria destroy their red blood cells, leading to kidney failure.  This disorder is called hemolytic uremic syndrome. The Center for Disease Control states that of the children that get E. Coli poisoning, 2-7 percent will develop this deadly disorder.  The disorder is common enough to make E. Coli poisoning the number one cause of kidney failure in America’s children.

The primary way people contract E. Coli poisoning is through eating improperly cooked hamburgers or unpasteurized milk.  Hamburger improperly stored can contaminate work surfaces in kitchens, restaurants and grocery stores.  Fruits and vegetables that are eaten raw can pick up the contamination from the raw meat residues.  How often have you visited the grocery store, and seen hamburger packages drip their blood onto the check out conveyor belt.  That blood may have dripped in the cart where you have set your toddler, or been smeared on the cart handle.  E. Coli germs can remain infective for up to twenty weeks.[2] Without thorough cooking or a proper disinfecting with bleach. E. Coli germs from hamburger could contaminate you, your food, and your children.   E. Coli bacteria are even resistant to normal refrigeration and freezing.  Contaminated items purchased today could harm you months from now. 

In humans, toxic cattle E. Coli remains in the digestive system for 5-10 days.  They leave the body through the stool.  This stool is then an infective agent.  Healthcare and childcare workers are especially at risk to secondary infection from the bacteria.  These bacteria are especially virulent in water.  

When the E. Coli bacteria are flushed with the stool into the public waste, they can remain toxic unless properly treated at a waste facility.  Unfortunately, many populations are without proper treatment facilities.  Halifax is the thriving capital of Nova Scotia with over 360,000 inhabitants.  Despite its wealth as a successful city, “four-fifths of Halifax's industrial and municipal sewage is pumped directly into the harbour.”[3]  Without proper treatment, E. Coli bacteria can remain a deadly infective agent, ready to spread to an unsuspecting public.

Halifax is not the only metropolitan area that does not practice safe sewage treatment methods, cities all around the shores of Lake Ontario pumped enough raw sewage in it to not only destroy the lake but also make it dangerous to swim in.

The Great Lakes are interconnected; it is hard to pollute one without affecting the others.  Canada and United States take pride in having a huge supply of fresh water to draw on, and cities on both sides of the border use these lakes as their drinking water supply.  But just how fresh is this water?

Citizens of Walkerton, Ontario were happy to go about their daily lives, trusting that the government was providing them with safe drinking water. 

In May of 2000, their trust was shattered, and may never again return.

One spring day in 2000 a farmer climbed on his tractor and proceeded to spread cattle manure on a field.  This a common practice in agricultural areas and the farmer spread it following the government standards. 

Unfortunately, around the 12^th of May, the manure the farmer had spread seeped into one of the supply wells for the city of Walkerton.  Workers at the Walkerton public utilities did not act quickly on tests that showed E. Coli was in the drinking water.  They did not add the appropriate level of chlorine to kill the bacteria.  Not until the 21^st of May, nine days after the contamination occurred, did the local government authorities warn the public of the danger.  In that time the men, women and children of Walkerton ingested enough toxic E. Coli from cattle manure to poison 2,300 residents and kill seven.

Many of the children who survived the outbreak developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, damaging their kidneys permanently.  The CDC details the long-term effects:

About one-third of persons with hemolytic uremic syndrome have abnormal kidney function many years later, and a few require long-term dialysis. Another 8% of persons with hemolytic uremic syndrome have other lifelong complications, such as high blood pressure, seizures, blindness, paralysis, and the effects of having part of their bowel removed.[4]

Long-term illness.

That could be Walkerton’s price for living near fields that cattle manure gets spread on.  The farmer who caused the E. Coli infestation was not considered at fault.  Government guidelines protected him.  What guidelines protected the residents of Walkerton?

Public water systems are available in most cities and towns in the United States and Canada.  The people who live in villages and rural areas use water from private wells.  In many cases, the fields the farmers spread their cow manure on are only a short distance away from the wells that their neighbors drink from.  If run-off from neighboring fields can contaminate a government monitored public water supply, what can they do to well water?

To those of you who do not have the safety of public water treatment (Walkerton residents could argue this), do you know what is going into your drinking water? 

Even if your water is safe, E. Coli from cattle is prevalent in foods that our children eat everyday.  Thousands of tonnes of ground beef are served to our children in cafeterias, fast food restaurants, and at home. 

Cattle that carry harmful E. Coli bacteria are outwardly healthy. They show no visible signs of the infection. Meat inspectors do not test for the presence of E. Coli before allowing the beef into the human food supply.  Since its discovery in 1982, millions of people have taken ill from its presence in hamburgers.  Lawsuits of restaurant chains such as Jack in the Box that have distributed E. Coli infected burgers, are proof of the dangers that threaten consumers. 

Eric Schlosser, author of the New York Times best-selling book Fast Food Nation, has made himself an authority on the restaurant industry in the United States.  In an article called ‘Bad Meat’ written for the publication: The Nation, Schlosser outlines the incredible danger of E. Coli infection, and the federal governments lack of control. 

Schlosser points out that the USDA no longer has the ability to stop meatpacking plants from distributing contaminated beef.  Company employees now do the meat inspection at their own processing plants.  USDA inspectors can only do random tests for E. Coli bacteria at wholesale and retail locations.  By the time the inspectors locate any tainted meat, consumers may already have purchased it. 

To show the enormous power that the meat industry has over the government, Schlosser details a case where the USDA shut down a Texas company, Supreme Meat Processors, one of the largest suppliers of meat to the National School Lunch Program.  The USDA repeatedly found salmonella, a bacteria that sickens over a million Americans each year, in the Supreme Meat Processor’s meat products.    The USDA closed down the plant in November of 1999.  With the help of the meat packing industry, Supreme Meat Processors sued the federal government and won.  They went on to influence the government into overturning salmonella limitations in beef products.  Now it is legal in the USA to sell beef that is thoroughly contaminated with salmonella to all US citizens, including the young ones that use the National School Lunch Program.

Schlosser points out that federal law does not even require a meat processing plant to keep a list of suppliers they ship to.  The USDA can’t even track an infected meat shipment from the source to the restaurants or stores it supplies.[5] 

This does not bode well for the protection of people from Mad Cow when it does rear its head in the USA.  How do we know it hasn’t already?  Since meat safety inspection is now in the hands of the company that slaughters the beef, how do we know that they haven’t hidden any dangerous findings?  What profitable company wants to be the first to cry Mad Cow?

With the USDA intimidated by the meat suppliers, how safe do you feel putting that hamburger in your child’s mouth?  Schlosser states that as long as the USDA wears two hats, that of meat inspector and that of promoter of American meat consumption, the consumer will never be properly protected.

Avoiding hamburger altogether is no guarantee that you and your family won’t get E. Coli poisoning from cattle.  Dairy cows also transmit the toxin in their milk.  The Center for Disease Control would have you believe that only unpasteurized milk can carry risk of E. Coli poisoning, but this is not accurate. 

On June 1^st, 2000, a USDA inspection of Breakstone small curd cottage cheese showed that the product contained toxic E. Coli bacteria.  Cottage cheese is most often eaten cold, and the E. Coli could have led to a considerable outbreak of disease.  Kraft, the parent company, was quick to voluntarily recall the product, which had already been sold to consumers in stores in various locations.  I do not know how Kraft or the FDA hoped to reach all the people who bought their product.  Very few of these recalls get the media attention needed to thoroughly protect the population.  In fact, the FDA has so many recalls on a regular basis that it could justify its own television and radio station just to announce them all.    

How did E. Coli get into pasteurized cottage cheese?  The FDA never bothered to find out.  They were content with the fact that Kraft recalled the items.  What would have happened if a USDA inspector had not made an onsite visit to the factory?  The infected batch sent out for consumption had already passed the company quality inspection unit, and was on store shelves when the USDA inspector made the E. Coli discovery and ask for the June recall. 

When a company is left to inspect its own products for the consumer’s safety, the conflict of interest creates considerable room for deliberate error.  The letter from the FDA to the Chief Executive Officer of Colgate-Palmolive (referred to on page 28) regarding tainted toothpaste made this perfectly clear.

There are not enough FDA inspectors to ensure the public’s safety.  Kraft claims to be sincerely interested in protecting the public from health risks.  Considering that Kraft is owned by Philip Morris, tobacco giant whose products have caused countless deaths due to cancer, how interested in protecting the public health could they be?

There remains no answer as to how the dangerous E. Coli bacteria from dairy cattle got into the Kraft food designed to be eaten without cooking.  If it can happen in cottage cheese, E. Coli could contaminate sour cream, yogurt, cream and even milk.  If no FDA inspectors were in the food plants to stop the dangerous contamination, our first warning would be the sight of our loved ones getting sick.

Mad Cow may be a serious threat to the food supply, but E. Coli from cattle already is.  So far this simple bacteria, which meat packing plants will not let government inspectors test for, has killed more people in three years than Mad Cow has in ten.