Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture
Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

A newsletter for faculty, staff and students

May-June 2005 • Vol. 31, No. 3

E. coli Contamination Greatly Reduced, Thanks to Research

(Editor's Note: This is Dean Greg Weidemann's column from the Spring 2005 edition of The Food Safety Consortium Newsletter in his capacity as coordinator of the three-university research alliance.)

Dean Gregory Wediemann

At the beginning of the research process, it’s not always easy to take the long view and think about where it’s all going, or how long it will take for any findings to work their way into something that enhances the public good. Food safety is no exception. So it is always heartening when new statistics are handed down that tell us our research took us to a desired goal.

The big news in March was an announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service of a 43.3 percent decrease during one year in positive samples of E. coli O157:H7 in ground beef. The agency treated 8,010 samples and found 0.17 percent positive for the pathogen in 2004, down from 0.30 percent in 2003 and from as much as 0.86 percent in 2000.

Dom Castaldo, the editor of MeatNews.com, explained it in consumer-oriented terms. “Those are pretty good odds against getting sick from contaminated beef,” he said. “It essentially means that if you ate a hamburger for lunch every day for about three years, you may eat one that contained E. coli O157. And if that one contaminated hamburger was handled and cooked properly, it would be unlikely you would have become ill.”

The credit, as usual, goes to the role of science and those who practice it. Barbara Masters, FSIS acting administrator, said strong science-based policies aimed at reducing pathogens made the difference.

The sentiment was echoed a few days earlier in a speech by Elsa Murano, the former USDA undersecretary for food safety and currently dean of agriculture and life sciences at Texas A&M University. She told the USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum that government has advanced the use of science in food safety policies by facilitating the development of peer-reviewed risk assessment procedures and approval of food decontamination methods. Murano also said she would like to see small scientific advisory panels established that would be available to government policymakers.

The bottom line to Murano’s remarks is that funding of land-grant agricultural experiment stations – such as the Food Safety Consortium universities, for example – is important because they “provide the needed foundation that allows for sustainable research efforts over the long term.”

The progress made in reducing E. coli in ground beef in the past few years is just one example of research driving improvements in the safety of the nation’s food supply.  Research personnel, industry officials and government policymakers did their share to make it that way, with science as their guiding light.