Nestled between a report on the best headphones and finding “hidden helpers” in your smart phone in the October edition of Consumer Reports, which boasts itself as the world’s largest independent, nonprofit consumer product testing organization, is a troubling “study.”
The publication’s cover story for the issue is a study claiming that the ground beef consumers buy at the store is filled with hazardous bacteria, which is caused by conventional methods of finishing a beef on corn, soy and other feed sources, and the meat has the potential to make people “seriously ill.” However, it states that grass-finished, organically raised cattle have a lower probability of harmful bacteria and is less likely to make consumers ill.
It is unfortunate that Consumer Reports offered this misleading information to the millions of people who trust its scientist, reporters and editors to offer nonbiased opinions about products that are on the market. Beef industry advocates have expressed concern over the study because it “misleads consumers into thinking that organic and/or grassfed beef is safer.” According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “organic” and “grassfed” labels do not imply any additional safety factor.
Consumer Reports claims that the contamination of the ground beef comes from cattle being pumped full of hormones and antibiotics before being moved to overcrowded feed lots, then processed through industrial processing plants that sometimes lack proper cleaning procedures of the carcasses because of the sheer number of animals that are slaughtered at those plants daily. Grass-finished cattle, however, are treated more humanely and not force fed feed items that they cannot properly digest. The cattle are slaughtered, typically, at smaller facilities where they are treated more humanely at the time of slaughter, according to the report.
The most common bacteria found in ground beef? Ecoli 0157H7. What the publication fails to mention is that it is naturally occurring in warm-blooded mammals, including humans.
For its study, the publication purchased 458 pounds of ground beef, both conventionally finished and grass finished/organic, from 26 locations across the country, including large chains, big box and natural food stores. In its testing, Consumer Reports found that all 458 pounds tested positive for bacteria enterococcus and/or nontoxinproducing e.Coli that signified fecal contamination, even the beef that was grass finished. Almost 20 percent of the samples contained the C. perfringens, 10 percent tested positive for a stain of S. aureus bacteria. Only 1 percent tested positive for salmonella.
That might sound scary, but those pathogens can be eliminated through proper handling of raw meat, by cooking the meat to the proper temperature and by not leaving food out all day before refrigerating.
Consumer Reports does state that proper cooking and handling will eliminate the bacteria, but the damage is done to agriculture.
One area the report does not address is the handling of ground beef after it leaves the processing facility. Workers at the facilities are trained in the proper handling of the carcasses and the end product. However, those who work at the supermarkets and the big box stores won’t always have that same training. Maybe Consumer Reports should do a study on how many people who work in the food handling/service industry actually wash their hands before returning to work after using the bathroom.
It appears that Consumer Reports is laying the blame of ground beef-related-foodborne illnesses on farmers who do not follow a grass-finished program. I have met some folks who are believers in the grass-finished philosophy and it is just one more segment in agriculture that I am proud to advocate for, but this study pits one cattleman against another.
Will the beef industry survive this report? Yes. Will people still slap some burgers on the grill? Yes. But we, as beef advocates, will have to continue to remind consumers that we strive to produce the highest-quality and safest food in the world each and every day – and to cancel their subscription to Consumer Reports.
Julie
