How to keep from buying ground beef that can make you really sick

Is that supermarket ground beef a recipe for disaster?

It’s the deep, dark secret hiding out in your local supermarket — one that can make you and your family deathly ill.

When the news came out several years ago that McDonald’s could be using the meat from up to 100 different cows in its hamburgers, people were shocked.

But it turns out that’s nothing compared to what goes on in big-chain supermarkets, where the ground meat can be coming from hundreds — even a thousand — different cows!

And that little detail really matters when it comes to not getting seriously sick from that backyard barbecue.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to stay safe and still enjoy grilling up those burgers.

Where’s the (safer) beef?
Recalls of meat products have become so commonplace these days that you may not even pay much attention to them anymore.

Just a few months ago, for example, Walmart was forced to pull over 5,000 pounds of meat off its shelves due to possible contamination with E. coli — a nasty and possibly deadly pathogen that can cause extreme diarrhea, bloody stool, and acute stomach pain. And that’s just one incident out of many, when it comes to bad beef.

Along with E. coli, there’s another commonly found microbe that you don’t want in your burger — salmonella.

But here’s where things can get really risky: It’s been estimated that merely one pound of ground meat in your supermarket can come from up to a thousand different cows! Plus that, those packages may say they contain freshly-ground meat, but it’s really from a giant vat that’s been coarsely ground — then put through the store grinder again.

And each different batch that makes up that big lot of beef has the potential of being tainted with one or more of those dangerous pathogens. Talk about stacking the odds against you!

Along with that, it’s next to impossible to trace back the origins of contaminated meat that comes from so many sources and stop it from reaching the shelves. That also means thousands of backyard chefs may be serving up bad beef that there’s no way to recall.

That’s really scary when you consider how often E. coli and other microbes are detected in meat processing plants!

But before you think about packing up your grill and putting away your chef’s hat, there is an easy way to put a safer burger on your menu.

Instead of just picking up a Styrofoam package of ready-to-cook patties or ground beef, shop at a supermarket where they still employ an actual butcher and have a piece of beef ground to order. Also, check to see if there’s an old-fashioned butcher shop in your locale — one where they know what they’re selling and exactly where it came from.

By doing that, you’ll also be steering clear of purchasing what was dubbed by the media several years ago as “pink slime.” That’s ground-up meat scraps and “connective tissue” cleaned up with ammonia gas or citric acid and sometimes added to ground beef as a filler (now labeled as “finely textured beef”).

Another surprise for many burger-lovers was the disclosure early this year by the USDA that other cow body parts — like hearts and tongue — are often added to commercial batches of ground beef. And that’s despite the fact that the USDA had a long-standing prohibition on such additions, one that’s now apparently off the books.

But even if you’re buying fresh-ground, grass-fed beef from a local butcher shop, that doesn’t mean you can stop taking precautions when bringing it home and cooking it up.

For one thing, don’t place raw meat on cutting boards or other surfaces that won’t be thoroughly washed with soap and hot water before coming into contact with other foods or utensils.

And that burger still needs to be cooked thoroughly and to the right temperature, which means you’ll need to have a meat thermometer. Yes, that safety measure applies to hamburgers, too!

According to the USDA, ground beef (and pork) should be cooked to a minimum temperature of 160º F — and that means the middle, not the charred outside. As long as a burger has reached that internal temp, it’s safe to eat even if it is still showing some pink on the inside.

“Why you should think twice before getting ground beef from the supermarket” Julie R. Thomson” July 28, 2017, Yahoo News, yahoo.com