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Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, consumed a hamburger her mother made. That day, she thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes.
Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.
Ms. Smith, 22, was found to have a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to the hamburger that her mother had grilled for their Sunday dinner in early fall 2007.
But the virulent form of the E. coli O157:H7 bacteria, was discovered again just last week. The South Carolina Meat Poultry Inspection Department (SCMPID) has recalled 6,908 pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7.
Approximately 500 packages of affected product were distributed from April 12 through April 17, 2012 from this lot and as of the date of this release, 263 of these packages have already been retrieved from retail stores.
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| Stephanie Smith |
Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead.
The recall was issued after SCMPID lab tests on samples of ground beef produced by Lancaster Frozen Foods, of Lancaster, SC were positive for E. coli O157:H7. Lancaster held the lot while awaiting test results, but additional non-ground product from the same lot was used by and G&W Incorporated, Hickory Grove, SC.
FDA doing more harm than good
Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.
Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.
“FDA not only has insufficient resources, but it also has some major gaps in its authority,” said Sandra Eskin, director of the Food Safety Campaign at Pew Charitable Trusts.
An unwanted side effect of those gaps: 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths are caused by food borne illness in the U.S. each year.
The passage of a law called, S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, gives the FDA more power to prevent outbreaks – a change that was hailed by food safety advocates.
Looking out for specific foods to avoid is key
Studies show that eating just one sausage a day can significantly raise your risk of bowel cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease, according to an analysis by the World Cancer Research Fund. Eating 1.8 ounces of processed meat daily – about one sausage or three pieces of bacon – raises the likelihood of the cancer by a fifth. Processed meats may also trigger cancer in the prostate, lung, stomach and esophagus.
Processed meats include bacon, ham, pastrami, salami and hot dogs. Sausages and hamburgers can also fall into the category if they have been preserved with salt or chemical additives. The analysis also found that red meat raises the risk of bowel cancer, but to a lesser extent. Processing raises levels of cancer-causing chemicals called N-nitroso compounds, making bacon, sausages and other processed meats more deadly.
According to estimates, if everyone cut down on red and processed meat, one in 10 cases of bowel cancer could be prevented.
For Ms. Smith, the road ahead is challenging. She is living at her mother’s home in Cold Spring, Minn. She spends a lot of her time in physical therapy, which is being paid for by Cargill, the company that produced the contaminated meat, in anticipation of a legal claim. Her kidneys are at high risk of failure. She is struggling to regain some basic life skills and deal with the anger that sometimes envelops her. Despite her determination, doctors say, she will most likely never walk again.
