Jolley: Five minutes with Dr. Richard Raymond and food safety

A. Twenty pages (of responses) for a simple blog!

John Munsell: "There is a great risk accompanying raw meat. Therefore, every segment of the food industry must accept some responsibility...nor can we merely demand that consumers fully cook our fecal bacteria."

False_Positive: "Our tendencies are to view the world in black and white, or as good and bad. That typically doesn't correspond to reality. That's exactly what's going on here in this debate, with both sides accusing each other of being completely wrong.....The challenge will be recognizing once we have arrived at this point. The point s/he references being the ‘critical point’ where the returns begin to diminish and the cost of improvements continues to rise.

"Doug" response to "Buzz Lightyear's" attack: "Your response is exactly what makes Dr. Raymond's blog necessary. While you kick back in your easy chair, crack another beer and bask in the glow of how well "just cook it" is working, the rest of us will continue to work toward selling a more wholesome product."

And my favorite from Ralph Weber: "How about 'AND cook it'? No one reasonably disputes that steps can and should be taken prior to food reaching the consumer or preparer. And the consumer/preparer has an important role also. Framing the debate as ‘blaming the victim’ misses the point that in order to ensure safe consumption of food, everyone in the chain has a role, including the consumer/preparer."

And follow up to Ralph from Daren Williams: "The difference betweeen ‘just' and ‘and’ is that we need to take responsibility for delivering a safe product to consumers AND we need their help in making sure it is handled and cooked properly in their home or in the restaurant...It's the subtle difference between saying ‘safe food is your responsibility’ vs. saying ‘we all share the responsibility for safe food.’"

Q. Filter #2 will give us the irrational responses. I read a few that were clearly over the top but, not to muddy the water, tell me about those missives.

A. Buzz Lightyear: "Now that Dr. Raymond has a blog, he has all the answers. Where were these answers during his tenure? Now the Dr. is railing against a 100% proven method” And in a follow up to Doug's response above: “Maybe you should you should have read them (meaning his reblogs) before you ran to the side of your poppy raymond. PS Raymond quit the sloppy blog already"

Actually, I had been in meetings and got a little behind Buzz who evidently can spend all day at his computer.

INAZ: "I am sure our prehistoric ancestors on the plains of Africa had food safety and carried thermometers. Or just maybe we used to have immunities?"

Tony Alfredo: "I don’t get your point. Is your point that because I make a decision to tailgate indicates a need for making more federal laws? I can guess what your point is..."

(My point was simple---if you say "just cook it" do you always, really follow the guidelines, or are you selective about ground beef vs. an egg, sushi, steak, etc)

The worst was sent to my personal email from a guy claiming to be the President of Chicago Prime Packing and selling over $25 million of meat per year. He said "Our meat is too clean. How much money do we waste on keeping O157 out of the meat supply. If you want to stay on top of the food chain, you better eat some contamination, of which we have too little."

Q. The one common denominator about all the responses to your blog is every one of them was written by people who truly believed that what they said was God’s truth. What is it about a piece of meat that creates so much controversy?

A. Passion. Those who have worked in the industry for 30 years believe NO ONE can suggest any changes that are relevant, and those who have lost someone to a food borne illness will never believe they can trust industry to put food safety over profit. There is seldom any middle ground where these two groups can discuss changes. And there is always the distrust, rightfully earned, that many have a different social agenda, that being to simply remove meat from our diets by driving the cost up so high that most can't buy or will go out of business.  I have been called "anti-meat," "meat hater," etc. I love ground beef and medium rare steaks just as much as any meat man does. 

Q. “Just cook it” was a mantra that started with the major trade associations. One of the first to question it was Bill Marler, a food safety lawyer with a few enemies in the beef business. His comments were quickly dismissed by people within the industry as a rant by an outsider looking for personal gain.

Soon afterwards, Dr. Jim Marsden, one of the most respected names in the meat business, began saying the same thing. “Just cook it” isn’t the answer. Now, you’ve added your voice to the fray. Tell me again, why can’t the average consumer be expected to cook his way out of the food safety problem?

A. The average consumer keeps hearing, from industry and some politicos, that our food supply is the safest in the world. So why should they worry and fuss about safe food handling and cooking temps? I fell into that crowd before going to USDA, and I still dip my toast in the runny yolk, order steaks medium rare and love seared tuna. I think it is called "playing the odds."

Second, the average consumer eats more food prepared by someone else than by him/herself.

Remember, you must first have sense of crisis to create any change. And the average consumer has not sensed a food safety crisis. Even the repeated recall press releases become ho-hum after awhile. We have become immune to the message.

Q. One of the themes that ran through the responses to your blog was an objection to the ever-mounting costs and the diminishing returns to improving food safety. The implied question, of course, was when can we say “enough is enough, we can’t afford to make any more improvements.” Is there a point where you would say enough is enough? Is it a financial or moral decision?

A. We can't get to zero in raw meat and poultry. But we have the means to dramatically reduce the amount of contamination, some of which is not a direct cost to anyone but those contaminating our food.

1. Trace back to the source would hurt the big packer, but that is the source, not the grinder doing the recall. Cleaning up contamination at the source cleans up the food we eat.

2. Whole carcass, low dose irradiation. The Big Four would do this in a heartbeat if it were OK'ed as a processing aid. The overall added cost would be much less than another $100 million law suit against Cargill, and they know it. But the consumers (at least the few who say they represent the millions), will not let this happen. Why they will let more kids die instead of embracing technology, I will never figure out.

3. E. coli vaccines. Doing this to every cow born in the US would add one penny to the cost of a pound of ground beef and reduce the shedding of E. coli by 85%. More E. coli outbreaks come from produce than ground beef, but nearly every outbreak eventually can be traced back to a cow. This is an environmental issue, and the EPA already spends billion cleaning up toxic sites. Feed lots are toxic sites that can be mitigated. The government should pay for a mandatory vaccination program. $300 million would cover it. That is only one dollar per US citizen.

4. Phages. Treating live cattle before they go to the knock box reduces E. coli from entering the plant and renders current processing aids more effective against a lower concentration of E. coli on the carcass. And that means less ground beef being diverted for a positive test, or being recalled. This costs nothing in the long run, maybe even saves a buck or two.

5. Europe has shown that treating laying chickens with vaccines can almost eliminate S enteritidis in eggs.

Q. Even if that point were reached, there is still that old saying about all you do when you try to make an idiot proof product is open the door to an even bigger idiot. Is there a line somewhere between the responsibility of the food processors to deliver the safest possible product and the careless consumer to not screw it up?

A. Yes but I don't know where the line is. AMI and others need to quit fighting the image issue and say raw meat should be considered contaminated and here is what you need to do to keep your family safe. They cannot keep wanting to have it both ways, claiming we have the safest meat supply in the world, but expect Joe Six Pack to handle ground beef like a frag bomb, ready to explode all over his kitchen counter.

A large meat retailer in the NE of our country has a sign next to its raw ground beef display case that says something like this product can cause death if you do not cook it to 160 degrees. Right next to that they display ground beef that has been irradiated and is far safer to consume, but they still sell far more raw ground beef than irradiated.

Industry needs to admit that how we produce our meat and poultry has changed significantly over the last 50 years in an effort to increase the bottom line. I am not against this change as I have said many times. We need it to feed the world. These changes, including feeding distilled grain products, CAFOs, grow out facilities, laying establishments, cages, faster line speeds in plants built years ago for smaller animals, etc, have all brought risks to the safety of the product.

The public (at least us old guys) still handle and cook meat the way we did when our Dads bought a 4H calf and had it butchered and packaged locally. That is not today's world. We need a different message to the "bigger idiots" that production has the trade associations keep representing the Big Four as being altruistic corporations with nothing but your safety as their first responsibility.

Remember one meat industry leader's infamous "show me the bodies" public statement? (That Statement) does not represent reality at all and only serves to deepen the animosity between the two groups. A Former FSIS Deputy Undersecretary commented to the Safe Food Coalition that if consumers would just cook it, their children would be alive today.

That is why I won't quit fighting to make our food supply safer, AND to educate consumers about the risks. As one responder said, it should be AND cook it, not JUST cook it.

We aren't going back to range free chickens and 100% grass fed beef, so industry needs to continue looking for ways to counter modern production practices' risks. The good guys are doing that, but the some of the retired meat heads can't get it thru their minds that change is still necessary.

Chuck Jolley is a free lance writer, based in Kansas City, who covers a wide range of ag industry topics for Vance Publishing.