Food poisoning from bacteria isn’t something anyone wants to deal with. Unfortunately, a recent test has shown that it may just be unavoidable.
There’s multidrug-resistant shigella, a form of devastating food poisoning that, as its name suggests, is resistant to many antibiotics. There’s E. coli, of course, and a variety of other superbugs that you just don’t really want in your meat.
But the push for meat free of antibiotics means that food poisoning is more possible now than it was before.
A test done by Consumer Reports titled “America’s Antibiotic Crisis,” details a three year investigation into bacteria in commonly consumed meat and poultry.
The news is not great.
The section “Our Flawed Food Supply” covers the section of the test where hundreds of samples of beef, chicken, shrimp, and turkey were tested for contamination.
Unfortunately for all of us meat eaters, the testers had bad news: “We found superbugs in all of them.”
Antibiotic use is up, too, in more than 32 million pounds of meat sold in 2013, up 17 percent from four years earlier.
If you’re hoping your sustainably-raised meat will save you, think again. It did beat out conventional meat for safety, but just barely.
So what are the numbers? Superbugs were found in all of the types of meat, sure, but in how much of it? Here’s the breakdown, by percentage containing superbugs:
- 14 percent of beef samples: 18 percent of conventional samples, and 9 percent of sustainable samples
- 14 percent of shrimp samples: 17 percent of conventional samples, and 3 percent of sustainable samples
- 57 percent of chicken samples: 59 percent of conventional samples, and 49 percent of sustainable samples
- 83 percent of turkey samples: 83 percent of conventional samples, and 80 percent of sustainable samples
Yum! Good thing Thanksgiving is tomorrow!
