Alliance Aims To Virtually Eliminate Pathogens In Meat
Dow Jones Newswire / Oct. 23, 2007KANSAS CITY -- Imagine grocery stores stocked with meat products virtually free of harmful pathogens such as E.coli or salmonella, eliminating the need for massive recalls like the recent Topps Food Co. recall of nearly 22 million pounds of ground beef.
Such a scenario may become reality if a growing alliance of livestock and poultry producers, along with packing companies and retail and food service venders, has its way.
The alliance claims it can market meat that is 99.9999998% free of deadly pathogens, through the use of patented probiotics along with current cleanliness and meat inspection procedures. Probiotics are dietary supplements and carcass washes that contain potentially beneficial bacteria, the most often used of which is lactobacillus acidophilus, a lactic acid bacteria.
In addition, the alliance says it is close to having enough members to offer such meat products in the near future. Once they reach a "critical mass" of members, packers and feeders can see fit to install the necessary equipment to get the system rolling.
That low level of bacteria achieved with probiotic use is akin to pasteurization, said Scott Crain, a western Kansas veterinarian, who is heading up the alliance, called VeriPrime. Once the program is running, consumers will be able to pick out their products by looking for the VeriPrime symbol on the packaging or on restaurant menus.
Research into the use of lactic acid bacteria to crowd out and kill other bacteria in the intestinal tracts of food animals and poultry and on their carcasses has recently been peer reviewed. Other scientists studied the experiments and the way they were done and concluded further studies would reach the same conclusions.
University studies and calculations estimate it is possible to eliminate nearly all E.coli, salmonella and listeria pathogens by combining certain strains of lactobacillus acidophilus bacteria as a feed additive and then as a carcass wash when combined with current pathogen-reduction practices.
The probiotic studies' results showing drastic pathogen reductions aren't without their critics, however.
"They're talking (something like) eight orders of magnitude reduction? Please." said Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist for the Consumers Union, referring to the long string of nines in the percent of pathogen reduction claimed by university researchers and VeriPrime proponents. He said he had seen cases where assumed additive effects of two studies did not work out, and he suspected this might be the case this time.
However, Mindy Brashears, assistant professor in the department of Animal and Food Sciences at Texas Tech University, said that number -- 99.9999998% reduction in pathogens -- is a reasonable calculation based on the additive effects of lactic acid bacteria in various studies.
Brashears did some of the original studies on the patented probiotics favored by VeriPrime, although she is not officially affiliated with the alliance.
Brashears said the cultures, relatives of those used in yogurt, cheese and sausages, are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as being generally recognized as safe to use on meat and as a feed additive. A check with the FDA confirmed this.
Use of lactic acid bacteria as a probiotic food additive to crowd out other bacteria, goes back to 1908, Brashears said in a 2005 paper on the subject. Elie Metchnikoff was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1908 for his studies of Bulgarians who drank soured milk and were noted for their longevity.
Already 50%-60% of cattle in U.S. feedlots are being fed probiotics of one form or another, Brashears said. It is done to reduce E.coli and for the general health of the animal.
However, the meat from those cattle is not labeled in the stores, Crain said.
One feeder using probiotics for cattle is Andrew Murphy, chief operating officer of Innovative Livestock Services Inc., a commercial and natural feeding organization with six feedyards in Kansas and Nebraska.
Murphy, who is not associated with VeriPrime, feeds probiotics with the intention of lowering the amount of pathogenic bacteria in his cattle. It fits well with his natural cattle program, and "it's the right thing to do," he said.
Murphy's move to feed probiotics started in 1999 when he began a pre-harvest food safety program throughout his feedlots. He said company officials developed their own Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points system for their feedyards.
Under HACCP systems, a company identifies key points where contamination or spoilage can occur and will take steps to prevent that from happening.
His early HACCP programs led to the Natural Beef programs and to the feeding of probiotics, Murphy said. He said he expects retailers and restaurants to be looking for beef from cattle fed probiotics soon, after the latest E.coli recalls and illnesses.
Another Kansas feedlot operator who uses probiotics in his cattle feed said he does it partly for the reduced E.coli but also because his cattle seem to be healthier when fed the probiotics than when they are not.
Crain said members of VeriPrime must submit to annual, independent audits of their practices in order to verify they are doing what they are supposed to be doing in order to be reimbursed for their efforts. They also will have to be able to trace all of their product right back to the feedyard or growing house.
"You cannot manage what you cannot find," Crain said.
Crain said it would be a mistake to substitute the current system of testing, inspections and sanitary practices used to limit pathogens in meat for VeriPrime's protocols, but the industry needs to move forward with a more aggressive approach. He likened the current program of inspections and sanitary methods to a sports team's defense and the use of probiotics to its offense.
"You can't inspect the causes of foodborne illness," Crain said. "You have to prevent it."
VeriPrime is unique in that all players in the chain will be reimbursed for their efforts through slightly higher retail prices. But the price increase is so low that consumers will hardly notice, Crain said, noting the added retail cost to a pound of hamburger, for instance, is about 1 cent.
Hal McCoy, a franchisee of YUM! Brands (YUM), is the chief executive of Restaurant Management Co., which owns 185 restaurants, 150 of them Pizza Huts with the rest being Kentucky Fried Chicken, Long John Silver's and A&W.
"As a restaurant operator, I'm so in favor of this," said McCoy, who also is a member of VeriPrime's board of directors. Adding a preventative food safety system to the current system of inspections would be very beneficial, he said.
"We can't inspect our way out of this problem" of pathogens in food, McCoy said. Samplers may do everything properly and still miss the tiny glob of pathogen in foods, so the solution is to get rid of it in the first place, he said.
McCoy feels major retailers like YUM! and others have been waiting for the peer reviews of the research data to jump into an alliance like VeriPrime. Now that researchers are beginning to verify the results of earlier studies, officials may be more receptive, he said.
The current line of lactic acid bacteria used in Brashears' work is manufactured by Nutrition Physiology Corp. Each strain is licensed and patented, said company president Doug Ware.
Ware said he began work on probiotics shortly after the 1993 Jack-in-the-Box incident, in which hundreds of people were sickened and four children died after eating E.coli-tainted hamburgers at Pacific Northwest Jack-in-the-Box restaurants. As a result, Ward said Nutrition Physiology Corp. now is well ahead of its competitors in the science.
"We're so far ahead of the industry, people don't want to believe us," Ware said, noting that research results often seem too good to be true.
The bottom line for Crain and others who are promoting the VeriPrime network is that the system can't work haphazardly. The protocols of feeding, sanitation, tracing, slaughter and carcass treatment must be backed up with sanitation procedures clear up to being delivered to the consumers.
Without all of that, such graphic reductions in pathogens that the research says is possible cannot be achieved, he said.
And McCoy said it's doable quickly.
"Once the equipment is installed for feeding and treatment of meat at the packing plants, within 120 days our food supply will be (virtually) salmonella, E.coli and listeria free," McCoy said.
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