Study: Your Ground Beef May Be Full Of Bacteria IF You...

It’s always a gamble to buy meat that isn’t sustainably made. But now, some store-bought ground beef has even been shown to contain bacteria that can make your hamburger patties way more dangerous.

A new Consumer Reports study found that 20% of ground beef from conventional farms had antibiotic-resistant bacteria in it.

That’s not a great number. It wouldn’t be so bad were it not for America’s love affair with rare and medium-rare meat, which makes it much harder to cook out all of that bad bacteria.

This study looked at 300 packages of conventionally and sustainably produced ground beef from around the country. They tested all of this meat for C. perfringens, E. coli, Enterococcus, Salmonella, and Staphylococcus aureus.

All of the samples contained at least one of these bacteria. 80% of the conventional beef had at least two. Ten percent of the conventional beef at a strain of Staphylococcus aureus that’s can’t be killed, even when cooked properly.  

So maybe it’s best to stay away from conventionally farmed ground beef.

As for the sustainably produced stuff, hopes are much higher. Only 9% of that ground beef had antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And even though all samples of it had at least one of the five bacteria they tested for, the sustainably produced beef was less likely to have harmful strains.

Consumer Reports closed by recommending that when buying ground beef, it’s best to look for labels with the words “no antibiotics,” “grass-fed,” “organic,” or any combination of the three.

Tom Vilsack of the USDA responded to the study by saying “Measures taken to improve ground beef include a zero-tolerance policy for six dangerous strains of E. coli, better procedures for detecting the source of outbreaks, improved laboratory testing, and more. USDA’s food safety inspectors work in every meat facility, every day, to reduce illnesses across all products we regulate, and we’re proud to report that illnesses attributed to those items dropped by 10% from 2013 to 2014.”

Still though, probably best to keep it organic and sustainable. Just to be safe.

Will you be buying sustainable ground beef from now on?

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