Thu, 23 Mar 2006

Consumption of risky foods declines

This is more interesting for what's not said. Note the list of unsafe foods:

  • pink hamburgers
  • pink ground beef
  • raw fresh fish
  • raw oysters
  • raw/unpasteurized milk
  • runny eggs
  • alfalfa sprouts

What's not said is why these foods are considered unsafe.

First off, aren't "pink hamburgers" and "pink ground beef" the same thing? These are considered unsafe because they're undercooked, which may not kill off any harmful bacteria in them. How did the harmful bacteria get in there? Usually through unsafe handling practices in the processing and distribution chains. And they left undercooked chicken completely off the list. Why?

Furthermore, color is not a good indicator of cooking safety: temperature is the only reliable indicator of cooking safety.

Raw fresh fish is called sushi and is eaten extensively in east Asia - why is it considered unsafe here and not there? Again, handling and processing.

Raw oysters are unsafe because of modern pollution.

I've posted about raw milk on previous occasions.

Runny eggs? Again, processing and handling, and in this case, the environment the egg is gathered from and the length of it's storage. Fresh eggs from free ranging (and nesting) chickens pose no threat because the bloom is intact. The bloom degrades over time.

Which leaves us with alfalfa sprouts. An uncooked vegetable. In its 40 year history, only twelve incidents of bacterial infection in sprouts have been recorded, and nine of them came from the same seed source.(link) And if sprouts are unsafe, why isn't any raw veggie considered as such?

In short, while this study may be entirely accurate as to the numbers of Americans consuming these foods, it grossly misleads about food safety and makes no case whatsoever for the listed items actually being unsafe. It would be like a study listing travel by horseback as an unsafe mode of transport, and concluding that road tripping Americans are safer now than they were a century ago because we use automobiles.

Americans are eating safer. The number of people who reported eating one or more foods associated with an increased risk of foodborne disease declined by a third from 1998 to 2002, according to survey results released today at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

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