Gayla
Sep 20, 2006, 12:08 AM
Post #8 of 23
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Jonna, E. Coli is one of the most common and prevelant bacterias in existence. There are literally thousands of e. coli variants. The last I heard the bacteria in question with the spinach was e. coli 0157. This is a particularly virulent strain of e.coli. You might recall the outbreak that happened at the Jack-in-the-Box up in Washington a number of years ago. This was the first incident where e.coli 0157 hit the radar and public health consciousness. In that outbreak a young child died after eating a hamburger that, while cooked through, had not reached the optimum temperature at which the e.coli bacteria would be killed. The ops manual for JITB did specify an internal temperature that would have been sufficient to kill the bacteria but the particular restaurant had not followed the ops manual and was not cooking it's hamburgers to the correct internal temperature. They were not doing this dilberately, it was a whole raft of factors that came into play, i.e. getting slammed and trying to meet demand at busy times, trying to meet the (sometimes) insane service time targets the fast food providers demand of their stores, poor employee training, insufficient management oversight. If you think about how thin some fast food burger patties are, you can probably understand how it may appear to be cooked through - not raw, red or pink in the interior - but might not reach an internal temp high enough to kill bacteria.
What is the correct internal tempreature? Serv-Safe, which is the industry training program, teaches to keep food out of the danger zone. The danger zone is anything between 40* - 140* F. This is the temperatures at which bacteria will thrive. They need time, temperature and medium, with protein based foods being the best medium for facilitating bacterial growth. In the original JITB e.coli 0157 outbreak it turned out that the hamburgers were only achieving an internal temperature of somewhere around 127*-130*. So, why can you eat a steak cooked rare and not get sick? Because a steak is what is called a whole muscle cut of meat. A hamburger is what is called, finely divided, meaning that any bacteria that may be on the surface of the meat ends up being distributed throughout the ground beef by the cutting, mincing and/or grinding process. Because most steaks are fired at high temperatures (a broiler at Ruth Chris steak house, for example, can reach 600+* F) any bacteria on the surface of the steak is going to be destroyed. Jonna, I know you spend time in SoCal, next time you go to a burger place take a look at the menu. Somehwere on the menu there will probably be a disclaimer of sorts saying that all burgers will be cooked to well done. Some places will cooked them to medium (but almost never rare) on request, others won't. CA does have a state law requiring all finely divided meat products to be completely cooked and to reach an internal temperature of at least 145*
145* is the minimum internal temperature considered to be safe. Many safety manual will recommend cooking to 155* - 165* and I've even seen a few that recommend cooking poultry to an internal temperature of 180*. Personally, I think that's excessive and will absoultely render almost any white meat poultry inedible. So far I've only discussed meat, so how does e.coli 0157 end up in produce?
Well, there are several ways that can happen. Poor personal hygiene by a food handler, poor handling during the growing and harvesting process, which appears to be the issue with this spinach thing; or cross contamination. After the JITB incident the common thinking was that it was confined to meat, but an outbreak in Colorado was eventually traced back to unpastuerized apple juice sold by Odwalla. A thorough investigation of the packing plant revealed none of the bacteria and there was a lot of head scratching going on about where it had come from. It turned out that Odwalla used all the apples from it's orchards including those that had already dropped off the trees and were laying on the ground. The source of this particular contamination turned out to be the ground apples because they had been contaminated by the droppings left behind by transient animals passing through the orchard. At the time of this incident Odwalla was the darling of the natural food industry and their unpastuerized apple juice their star product. The e.coli outbreak just about put them out of business; today they no longer process or sell unpastuerized apple juice. The pastuerization process will kill just about any bacteria. Shortly after the Odwalla outbreak another one followed at a Sizzler in central Oregon. This was traced to canteloupe served in the salad bar. The canteloupe had not been washed before being cut. The e.coli 0157 bacteria was on the rind of the melon and was introduced to the flesh by the simple process of slicing through the rind. As the knife went through the rind it picked up the bacteria and redistributed it onto whatever flesh it touched. The contaminated rind would also have contaminated the cutting board used. This Sizzler was not as lucky as Odwalla and could not recover after the incident and closed. Simply rinsing the melons off under running water would have reduced the risk substantially as much of the bacteria would have been rinsed down the drain. Jack-in-the-Box, it should be noted, responded to their outbreak very aggressively. They developed an extremely rigid HACCP program that is really the industry gold standard and took a "take no prisoners" approach to implementation. They got a lot of flak from the other fast food companies, but most of them have since followed suit.
I saw a report this evening that indicates the actual source of the current spinach outbreak may not ever be known. Each e.coli bacteria has it's own specific DNA pattern which is how the CDC was able to link all these illnesses to the spinach and the first packer. I think what they are saying is that they probably will never find out what caused the problem at ground zero. Our bodies usually co-exist with a rather large number of e.coli, in fact some of them are very helpful to the digestive process. E.coli 0157 is not one of the friendly bacteria. When the bacterial balance in the body is upset is when you will usually see, and feel, a reaction. Those most at risk are the very young, the elderly, those with illnesses and, of course, those with imparied immune systems. These groups do not have the same defenses a normal, healthy body does. Now, I am not suggesting that everyone go out and throw caution to the wind and ignore the warning and eat a bunch of spinach. It is my understanding that cooking the spinach to a temperature of around 165* should kill any bacteria that might be there. I'm not sure it's really worth the risk. I had not heard that this particular strain might be resistant to heat. Typically e.coli can be destroyed by heating.
Freezing will kill approximately 70-80% of harmful bacteria. Heating/cooking food to an internal temperature of 155* - 165* will kill almost all harmful bacteria, but not 100% of harmful bacteria. Keeping food out of the danger zone of 40*-140* lessens the risk tremendously of food borne illness developing. Cooked spinach is not exactly high on the hi tparade of favorite foods, but raw spinach in salads and sandwiches is surprisingly popular.
Hope I've answered your question for you
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