[Reason] Canadian Steak Tartare Ban Leaves Chefs Feeling Raw

you realize that the food-born illness risk that comes from, say, beef, is primarily associated with the processing of ground beef? and that the introduction of e coli and the like comes from the grinding process? not the slicing of steaks or roasts. Chicken is a different story and should generally be well-cooked

 

I am very confident that in the restaurants where I order a hamburger, I can order that hamburger rare. It will be served to me rare, I will consume it rare, and I will healthfully digest its rarity after which I will expel what's left of it. And to date I have had no problems. I also have not heard nor learned of an epidemic of food-born illness from hamburger eaters where I live who similarly order and consume rare hamburger meat ordered at restaurants. Perhaps you have access to U.S. data that I do not.

when it comes to steak I am even more confident that I can order it rare, even blue rare, and it will be fine. I am confident for the reasons I mentioned above.

again, if you are more risk-averse than I am, you should order your meat well-done or burned. bon appétit!

 

fair enough. on the local processing, I and a lot of people I know purchase their meat, have it processed and wrapped, and that's simply how you get meat. there are also local butchers who do all the processing in-house--you go to them, you tell them what you want, they order the next animal that comes in, they cut it up for you the way you ordered it (for example, two-inch thick steaks, or tomahawk steaks, or "speedies" for the stew meat, etc) and it is all done right in front of you if you want to watch it happen behind the counter. Good grocery stores still do their own butchering. Not everyone buys their meat at Wal-Mart, I think that was the point I was trying to make. I think the few cases that have occurred in recent years of meat-related food-born illnesses have come from the big industrial processors who sell to the big mega-grocery chains like Wal-Mart. I doubt that there's a restaurant in either Canada or the United States that buys its meat from Wal-Mart. For the most part restaurants have to be very picky about where they source their meat, vegetables, and produce.

 

an example from recent years

Supplier Expands Beef Recall Over Concerns of E. Coli Contamination

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/us/10recall.html

Supplier Expands Beef Recall Over Concerns of E. Coli Contamination
By The Associated Press

• June 10, 2007

LOS ANGELES, June 9 (AP) — A meat supplier has expanded a ground beef recall to include about 5.7 million pounds of fresh and frozen meat because they may be contaminated with E. coli.

David Goldman, acting administrator of the federal Food Safety and Inspection Service, announced on Saturday that the recall would be expanded to include products with sell-by dates from April 6 to April 20. The beef was distributed by United Food Group LLC, based in California.

Mr. Goldman said that none of the latest batch of suspect beef was in stores now because the product would be well past its expiration date, but that consumers might still have some of the meat at home.

“It is important for consumers to look in their freezers,” he said.

The meat has been blamed for an E. coli outbreak in the Western states that resulted in 14 illnesses, spanning April 25 through May 18. All the patients have recovered.

On Wednesday, United Food Group expanded an initial recall of 75,000 pounds of ground beef, adding an additional 370,000 pounds based on “unspecified concerns” raised by the California State Department of Health Services. This meat had sell-by dates from April 29-May 6.

The recalled products were shipped to stores in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. They were sold under the brand names Moran’s All Natural, Miller Meat Company, Stater Bros., Trader Joes Butcher Shop, Inter-American Products Inc. and Basha’s.

Customers with questions about the recall can call United Food Group’s hot line at 1-800-325-4164. Those with recalled products should either throw the product away or return it to the point of purchase for a refund.
​

 

another case from 2007

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/us/06topps.html

After Extensive Beef Recall, Topps Goes Out of Business
By Ken Belson and Kareem Fahim
Oct. 6, 2007

Topps Meat Company, one of the country’s largest manufacturers of frozen hamburgers, said yesterday that it was going out of business a week after it pulled back more than 21.7 million pounds of ground beef products in one of the largest meat recalls in recent years.

In a statement, Anthony D’Urso, the chief operating officer at Topps, in Elizabeth, N.J., said that the company “cannot overcome the reality of a recall this large.”

He added, “This has been a shocking and sobering experience for everyone.”

Executives at Topps, which made frozen hamburgers and other meat products for supermarkets and mass merchandisers, declined to discuss how and why the company collapsed so quickly, or whether they could have taken steps earlier to protect consumers or to head off the plant’s closure.

But Amanda Eamich, a spokeswoman for the United States Department of Agriculture, said yesterday that on Thursday the department had served Topps with a “notice of intended enforcement,” a move just short of suspending the rest of the company’s meat production. Topps had stopped producing ground meat as of Sept. 26, but had continued to produce meat products like steaks.

Ms. Eamich said the agency had taken the action because of “inadequate process controls” in the company’s non-ground meat production line.

Agriculture Department officials have acknowledged that they knew that meat from Topps was contaminated on Sept. 7, when the first positive test results for E. coli came back, but that they waited for confirming tests before ordering a recall 18 days later. On Sept. 8, the department informed Topps that its hamburgers were suspected in a case of E. coli poisoning in Florida and requested samples from the plant for testing, officials at the agency said.

The Topps recall came less than a year after Taco Bell was hit by an E. coli scare after diners in several states fell ill, and it has renewed concerns about the safety of the nation’s food supply. Topps is not the first meat company to close after a recall. A Hudson Foods plant in Nebraska shut down in August 1997 after an even larger recall, of 25 million pounds of ground beef, and agreed to be bought by Tyson Foods within a month.

The initial recall of 331,582 pounds of Topps’ frozen hamburger patties was announced on Sept. 25, by which time nearly 30 people had fallen ill in eight states. On Sept. 29, the company issued a much broader recall. Health officials say the first reported case of sickness linked to the O157:H7 strain of E. coli found in the Topps meat occurred on July 5, when an 18-year-old girl in central Pennsylvania fell ill. Three days later, a case was reported in New Jersey. Other cases were reported in Connecticut, Maine, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and New York.

The company said a few of its 87 employees would remain at its plant in Elizabeth to help the Agriculture Department investigate how the bacteria might have tainted the frozen hamburger patties made there.
​

more at the link

 

I'm sure you see where I supplemented the n=1 anecdotal evidence with n=everyone else too evidence