PERSPECTIVE ON FOOD SAFETY : Bacteria in the Meat? Just Turn Up the Heat : There’s no way that federal inspection can protect us from harmful bacteria; irradiation, however, would do it.

Last month food safety once again was in the headlines. This time, however, the concern was not about manufactured chemicals like Alar in apples or PCBs in fish. Rather, the “toxin of the month” was a natural one--a food-borne pathogen, E. coli (specifically E. coli 0157:H7), in hamburger patties--which caused the death of at least one child and made another 100 or more people sick with severe abdominal cramps, watery diarrhea, vomiting and nausea.

Those who believe the primary causes of our nation’s ills are the irresponsibility of industry and the inadequacy of federal regulation immediately pointed the finger of blame at the meat industry and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, calling for increased government intervention to assure that the meat supply was “safe.”

The realities, however, are:

* There is no way under our current system that we are going to eliminate bacteria, even potentially life-threatening ones, from our meat supply.

* The primary responsibility for avoiding food-borne illness lies with the consumer and commercial food preparer, not the “government.”

* Our technophobic society must take part of the blame for the continued threat posed by natural food pathogens, because we have not yet embraced the most cost-effective way of keeping our meat supply free of all pathogens, including E. coli: irradiation of fresh meat and poultry products.

The bad news is that raw meat is flesh and tissue and all tissue contains bacteria. Bacteria like E. coli comes from the intestines of animals and contaminates the surface of meat as the carcasses are being processed. With every new knife cut into meat, new bacteria appear and when meat is ground, more new surface is created--and that means more contamination.

While the Department of Agriculture has more than 7,000 inspectors visually examining the carcasses of more than 120 million animals each year in an effort to keep obviously diseased meat from going to market, it is impractical to perform routine laboratory analysis of all raw meat to identify bacteria that we already know are there. (It is estimated that 3.5% of beef contains the strain E. coli , which is particularly virulent and can survive both refrigeration and freezing).

The good news is that proper preparation and handling eliminates the health risk of food-borne bacteria, including the virulent E. coli . Those who became ill eating at Jack-in-the-Box outlets in Washington state (and 6,000 other Americans reported infected with E. coli last year) got sick because the meat they consumed was not sufficiently cooked. Cooking the burgers to 155 or 160 degrees Fahrenheit rather than 140 would have made all the difference.

Now both consumers and food vendors should have sufficient incentive to cook meat until the centers are gray or brown and juices run clear with no trace of pink--and to avoid transferring, by utensils or hands, the bacteria on raw meat to foods that will not be cooked, like salads. If these precautions are observed, there will be no problem.

Yet many in search of a risk-free society are now demanding that the burden of destroying bacteria be lifted from the food preparer and transferred to industry and the Department of Agriculture by requiring the increased inspection and microbial testing of meat before it goes to market. Such action, however will only add to the cost of meat without promoting public health, because no matter what the level of federal expenditure might be, we will not be able to eliminate naturally occurring pathogens through inspection.

On the other hand, irradiation--the use of ionizing energy on foods--is a proved safe and effective means of breaking the cycle of food-borne disease, currently used for this purpose in more than 30 countries around the world. Indeed, once the meat is irradiated, not only are life-threatening bacteria like E. coli eliminated, but the meat can be eaten rare and no longer even needs refrigeration. (The sophisticated, highly scientific irradiation process does not make the food radioactive or change its taste or quality in any way--it just kills the germs that cause disease.

The U.S. government has approved the use of irradiation for pork, to control life-threatening trichina, and for poultry, to curb salmonella. The meat industry will soon be submitting a petition requesting regulatory approval for irradiating beef.

But progress toward implementing the approved use of irradiation has been slow because anti-technology advocates are circulating the unfounded claim that food irradiation is a health hazard and that producers fear a consumer rejection of treated products. If we are serious, however, about avoiding future cases of food-borne illness and death, it is time for at-risk consumers--all of us, in other words--to stop responding to the scaremongers and start listening to scientists who are unanimous in their conclusion that food irradiation would make an already incredibly safe food supply even safer.