Cuts to try

I've been sharing posts on Facebook with new cuts to try and I wanted to put them all in one place to make them easier to find.

The Meat Industry in the midst of COVID-19

This is a scary time. Our entire society is fighting an enemy we can't see and have never fought before. 

Everyone is worried and stressed.

There have been news reports this week about the virus spreading in meat packing plants and those plants shutting down or significantly slowing production.

What does that mean for our food supply?

First, we are not going to run out of food. Yes, a slow down in production may affect the variety of protein available in some parts of our country, but we are not going to run out. We may have to get more creative or open minded about what we cook and serve our families. We may have to try new things or not have our favorite cuts for a little while. 

But, this too shall pass. We will not run out of food.

Packing plants

Workers in packing plants work in very close quarters. They have to stand near each other. Social distancing is not possible. There are lots of shared spaces like break rooms, changing rooms, and work areas. It’s not surprising that the virus spread in the plants because people are so close to each other.

That doesn't mean that COVID-19 is being passed on to consumers. The USDA does not have any reports of people becoming infected with COVID-19 from food or food packaging. This virus mainly spreads from person to person and is a respiratory virus meaning that you become infected when it enters your nose, eyes, or mouth. Viruses do not grow in food and when foods are cooked, viruses are killed. Follow the four steps of food safety to keep your family safe from all illness; wash your hands, be sure to cook your food to safe temperatures, keep cooked foods away from uncooked foods, and be sure to chill your leftovers in a timely manner.

Companies are doing what they can to keep their doors open and keep their people safe. Many are taking temperatures of employees, testing employees for the disease, and when people are infected, they stay home from work.  There is lots of extra cleaning and sanitation. Workers are wearing masks (most already wear gloves and wash their hands frequently). Some companies are providing partitions to keep people apart from each other.

These plants are in the middle of the food chain, so shutting down can have devastating consequences up and down the food supply.

Farmers

This disease has been dreadful for farmers. Some dairy farmers are dumping milk and egg farmers breaking eggs. We’ve heard about potatoes and other produce going to waste because no one can come pick it. Farmers all over this country have millions of animals ready to go to harvest in our food supply. Packing plants not purchasing them is a devastating condition for those farmers. The supply chain for beef animals goes back over two years to when the cow was bred. Pork and poultry are not quite as long, but still several months.

Grocery stores

People are buying more food in grocery stores than we’ve ever seen. Those stores have to have employees there to keep the food on the shelves. Then there are the truck drivers and supply chain workers that are also still hard at work in this mess. Those folks are putting themselves at risk every day because they have to be interact with people. They wear masks and try to social distance, but it must be so stressful.

In the US, we have the safest, least expensive food supply in the world. But that takes millions of people working every day. I love to think about the scope of our industry. That industry that feeds 300 million people.

Please continue to ask me about the meat industry. Hit me up with questions about new cuts that you are trying or new ways of cooking. Let me know about your successes and failures. Send me concerns about food safety. I’m happy to answer any question you may have.

Myths about Super Chicken

Lately, I’ve been seeing some stories about how unnaturally large and overgrown chickens are. People see how much bigger chickens are today compared to 50 years ago, and they question what farmers and poultry companies are doing to get them that way. So, I thought I would write a post addressing some of the myths about Super Chicken.

MYTH: Chickens are given steroids and/or hormones to make them so big.

First, it has been against Federal Regulations to give chickens steroids or hormones since the 1950’s. You may remember that from my previous post about food labels. In addition to being unlawful, steroid hormones don’t work well through feed or water, so farmers would have to inject the birds to get the effects of the hormones. Most chicken farmers have 50,000 birds or more. It would take a long time to give that many shots.

Poultry scientists have studied bird nutrition for many years and learned the optimal diet for raising chickens quickly and efficiently. The diets are balanced with the exact about of carbs, protein, fats, vitamins and minerals the chickens need at their specific phase of growth. The birds have access to feed at all times, and all this attention paid to their dietary needs helps them grow fast.

MYTH: Chickens are loaded up on antibiotics to make them grow.

Most large poultry farmers raise their birds with minimal to no antibiotics in the feed and water. They have learned to control disease with sanitation and proactive feed ingredients like probiotics and essential oils. If a farmer needs give their birds antibiotics when they are sick or to help keep them from getting sick, they work with a veterinarian to determine the best medicine for their flock. Farmers predominantly use types of antibiotics that are not used in human medicine to treat sickness.

It is important to remember that, regardless of whether or not antibiotics were used in raising your chicken, there are no antibiotics in your chicken meat. All animals must go through a withdrawal time after they are given antibiotics, allowing their bodies time to metabolize the medicine and clear it from their system.

MYTH: Chickens are genetically engineered to be big and have large breasts. 

Chickens are not genetically modified or GMOs. Traditionally, farmers kept the biggest and the best hens (momma chickens) and mated them with the biggest and the best roosters (daddy chickens) and produced bigger and better chicks. Today in the poultry industry, those best-on-best mating decisions are made by scientists with pages of data about the birds. They can select new generations of chickens and emphasize any number of traits from growth and breast size to health and bone strength. Couple that with the fact that a farmer can produce a new generation of chicken in a much shorter time than a cow or a pig, and changes in the chicken industry have happened very quickly.

MYTH: Chickens are raised in cages to make them grow.

The inside of a chicken house.

Birds raised for chicken meat are kept in large open houses and allowed to roam freely. To protect the birds’ health, the houses are closed and protected from the outside environment, but the birds have lots of room to wander wherever they wish. They are kept warm in the winter and cool in the summer. There is food and water available all throughout the house. When you visit a chicken house, the birds are quiet and happy.

Do you have more questions about chicken myths?

There is more great info on the website, Chicken Check In. Or you can follow chicken farmers on social media.

I don’t have many chicken posts, but you can check out my post from the Moms at the Poultry Counter on white striping in chicken, or see my hormone or antibiotic posts. I also have one recipe post with chicken, Grannie Annie’s Pozole.

As always, please feel free to ask questions in the comments below. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find someone who does.

White striping in chicken

Dr. Christine Alvarado and Dr. Casey Owens
the Moms at the Poultry Counter

I have recently seen a few social media posts and had a few questions about white striping in chicken breasts. And honestly, I don’t know as much about chicken as I would like to, so I didn’t have very thorough answers to people’s questions.

So, as a scientist, what do I do when I don’t know something? I ask questions and do a little research.

As a mom, when I don’t know something? I ask my friends. Luckily, I have some really smart friends in Poultry Science who know more about chicken than I know about beef.

Dr. Casey Owens and Dr. Christine Alvarado (pics and bios below) are moms and Poultry Scientists who have been conducting research on the white striping that we sometimes see in chicken breasts. I asked them to write a few words for my blog about it.

So today we hear from The Moms at the Poultry Counter! 

White striping in chicken? What is that and is it harmful? What you need to know from Scientist Moms…..

Recently, I am sure many of you have been hearing about white striping in chicken breast meat – everything from ‘its fine’ to ‘don’t eat the chicken’.  So, we just thought we should clarify some information.  We have conducted scientific research in this particular area and this research may be misrepresented and/or misinterpreted in some cases by the general public. Many of our studies have been written for an audience consisting of scientists and industry in efforts to identify these quality conditions and improve them.

We as moms and scientists want to clarify that white striping in chicken breast meat is absolutely safe to eat – there is no food safety concern. We also wanted to make sure that as moms and scientists, everyone knows we feed chicken breast meat to our own children knowing we have the highest safety and quality standards in the USA. 

Now on to the science….. White striping is a quality factor in chicken breast meat caused by deposits of fat in the muscle during the bird’s growth and development (i.e., the bird’s life). In fact, it is similar to marbling in red meat.  Consequently, protein levels decrease slightly as fat increases.  However, white striping can occur in meat in varying quantities (also observed visually).  Meat that we consider to be mild or moderate may have striping that appears as very fines lines.  It isn’t always noticeable or necessarily detracting from its appearance. This level has been observed in chickens for many years; it just isn’t always noticeable.

Normal chicken breast (left) vs. a breast with white striping (right)

The striping we refer to as severe can be more abundant and prominent.  In more recent years, there has been more meat with increased severity of white striping and this is the potential quality issue. With that said, fat is present in any chicken breast meat in low amounts anyway so while there may be a slightly higher fat content in white striped breast fillets when compared to those that aren’t white striped, the overall fat content is still low.  Some references in social media are citing that white striping can increase fat by 224% and we know that sound like a lot, but when starting fat content is only 0.5%, that doesn’t result in much of an increase at all. Other studies state a much lower increase in fat (224% vs 84%); regardless, even a 100% increase would only double the amount (e.g., 0.5 to 1%), still resulting in low fat content.  The same is true for protein though the protein levels generally decrease as white striping increases, but again in very small quantities (2-3% decrease).

So what has changed? Why are we seeing more white striping in chicken meat? Chickens used in the meat industry are young, but they are now generally growing faster and bigger due to better management, nutrition, animal welfare, and genetics. Therefore, their growth and development is also changing and this can lead to more fat deposits in the meat.  By raising bigger birds, it means that fewer birds can be raised for the same amount of meat and at the same costs, thereby a relatively inexpensive, quality protein can be provided for people to eat.   

Another question from consumers is why don’t we just slow the growth down? Slower growing birds are less sustainable and will result in more birds being raised to produce the same amount of meat.  Also slow growing birds and organic birds have white striping as well.  So researchers are working on ways to reduce white striping through different feeds and ways of breeding the chickens. 

Our research studies use models to create white striping in the chickens, so we can study it better.  These studies are published to help the industry with improving quality and not to be misinterpreted that this meat is not safe or wholesome.  So, when you read information about white striping in chicken, don’t forget that we are moms and we have confidence that our industry produces a safe and high quality product for consumers. 

 Christine Z. Alvarado, Ph.D. and Casey M. Owens, Ph.D.

Dr. Christine Alvarado earned her B.S. in Biomedical Science ('93) and MS and Ph.D. (2001) in Food Science from Texas A&M University. She has been on faculty at Virginia Tech, Texas Tech and is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Poultry Science at Texas A&M University. Dr. Alvarado’s applied national and international research program primarily focuses on improving meat quality and process efficiency for poultry processors and determining functionality of non-meat ingredients used in further processed poultry. Dr. Alvarado also conducts research in food safety with an emphasis on working with processors to evaluate current and new innovative antimicrobial applications for efficacy and cost effectiveness.  

Dr. Alvarado is a Novus International Teaching award recipient and currently teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in poultry processing, poultry further processing, an undergraduate capstone poultry science systems course, and a graduate seminar. Dr Alvarado has 5 children, loves to teach students to be agricultural advocates, and loves to help empower students to be better leaders in society. 

Dr. Casey Owens received her B.S. degree in Poultry Science and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Food Science and Technology from Texas A&M University in 1994, 1996, and 1999, respectively.  She joined the faculty of the Department of Poultry Science at the University of Arkansas in 2000 and she is currently an Associate Professor and holds the Novus International Professorship of Poultry Science.  She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Food Science.  Her research has a strong emphasis on evaluating production and processing factors affecting poultry meat quality including tenderness, water holding capacity, color and sensory attributes.  Her recent research has focused on quality of meat from broilers in big bird market programs including muscle myopathies such as white striping and woody breast, and issues with meat texture.  Past research has included meat tenderness and methods for assessing meat tenderness with the development of the Meullenet Owens Razor Shear, pale, soft, exudative poultry meat, and the use of marination in poultry meat for improved meat quality.  She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and popular press articles as well as over 100 research abstracts. She has given over 45 invited presentations nationally and internationally. She is a Subject Editor for Poultry Science in the Processing and Products section. In addition to her research, Dr. Owens teaches Egg and Meat Technology and Value Added Muscle Foods at the undergraduate and graduate levels for students in Poultry Science, Food Science, and Animal Science. She also teaches industry workshops related meat and egg processing and further processing. She serves as an undergraduate academic advisor, and Dr. Owens has directed the research of numerous Ph.D. and M.S. graduate students in addition to undergraduate research. Dr. Owens has two children.

Grannie Annie’s Pozole

I don’t often do recipe posts. Honestly, I don’t often cook. But my friend Sarah Shotts is working on an awesome new adventure, Project STIR. She wants to create videos of families cooking together and passing down recipes and kitchen secrets.

Her project really hit home for me as I lost my Mother in August and my Dad’s Mom last October. What I wouldn’t give for a few more hours in the kitchen with either one of them.

So many of the things that make a dish delicious can’t be found on the recipe card. I hope Sarah’s project helps to preserve dishes for other families and cultures.

I decided to share my Grannie Annie’s Pozole.

Like most grandmas, Grannie Annie was happiest with a
 baby in her lap. That's Vallie at about 3 months.

I grew up in Texas, but my Dad’s family lived for several years in New Mexico. In those years, my Grandmother picked up several culinary traits from the Hispanic and Native American cultures in the Jemez Mountains. She made homemade tortillas and sopapillas and put green chilies in everything.

Pozole is a prehispanic soup traditionally made with pork and hominy. According to Dad (and verified by Wikipedia), the word pozole actually translates to simply ‘hominy’ in the native Aztec language.

Our family always ate Pozole on New Year’s Day, but I wanted to share it because it’s one of the most unique dishes we eat.

Bonus! It’s super easy and can be made in the crock pot!

I had to call my Dad for a recipe. Turns out there’s not one written down, so he recalled the recipe from memory.

POZOLE

3 big cans hominy (drained)

2 cans of Green Chili Enchilada sauce

1 can for chopped green chili

Jar of chopped pimentos

Pork or chicken cut to bite size

Salt and pepper

You may need to add a little water to cover all of the ingredients in the crock pot.

It takes 3 to 4 hours for the meat to cook and it is ready to eat.

He said Grandma used to make it with dried hominy that she soaked overnight, but it was just as good with canned hominy.  Grandma was very particular about how her dishes looked in the bowl, so she would buy some yellow and some white and then add pimento to make it look pretty.

We fixed the Pozole late morning and let it cook for most of the afternoon.

We made ours with chicken, but pork works just as well. I wanted to take a picture of the cut-up chicken, but I was chasing kids while Dad was doing the work.

Even the kids enjoyed it.

I love a good crock-pot recipe.
So easy and great for this time of year.

We topped it with shredded cheese and ate it
with flour tortillas. Dad warmed the tortillas in the
skillet to take the ‘store-bought’ taste out of them.

What’s in a food label? Antibiotic free

This summer I started a blog series on food labels. I’ve covered labels you see on meat products like Organic, Natural, Grass-fed, and Raised without Hormones.

Another claim you commonly see with ‘Raised without Hormones’ is ‘Raised without Antibiotics,’ ‘No Antibiotics Added’ or ‘Antibiotic Free.’



About two years ago I wrote a blog post about why antibiotics are used and Antibiotic Residues and Antibiotic Resistance. I’m not going to get into those topics in this post, just stick to the labels.

First, let me address Antibiotic Free.

Just like the similar label concerning hormones, the ‘Antibiotic Free’ claim is misleading and shouldn’t be found on a meat label. You may see it on some marketing claims that are not regulated by USDA, though.

All of the meat you buy in the US should be Antibiotic Free. Even if the farmer used antibiotics, those antibiotics shouldn’t be in the meat because the FDA regulates how antibiotics are administered to animals. The time when the farmer must stop using antibiotics before the animal is harvested is known as the withdrawal time. Those times differ between types of antibiotics and the species of animal, and they are explained on the antibiotic label.

Withdrawal times allow the animal to metabolize the antibiotic and eliminate it from the body so that no residues will be left in the meat. Therefore, all meat should be free of antibiotics.

Back to the Label

When a meat company uses the ‘No antibiotic added’ or ‘Raised without Antibiotics’ label, they must be able to prove to the USDA that no antibiotics were used to raise that animal.

Basically, that’s it. If the animal has never been given antibiotics, the meat company can use that label.

This has probably been the simplest of the labels in my labeling series.

Have you seen any other labels that you have questions about?

What’s in a food label? Raised without hormones

I’ve been writing a series of posts about food labeling. My previous posts have been about labels that involve the whole system of raising animals, like Organic, Naturally-raised or Grass-fed. Some labels are more specific and address one particular technology used for raising animals like hormones or antibiotics. Today I’m going to address the labels concerning hormones in meat.

First let me address “Hormone Free”

A big joke in the livestock industry is when we see a food, especially meat milk or eggs, advertised as “Hormone Free.”

All animals have hormones and need them to grow and produce meat, milk, eggs, babies, or whatever. All food has hormones. Nothing can actually be ‘hormone-free.’ Saying that beef is “hormone free” is about as pointless as talking about a boneless chicken ranch (you know, all the chickens just lay there.)

But, we all know that they really mean that the animals were raised without the use of added hormones.

Technically, you cannot label a meat product as hormone free. You see it on signs and menus, but it shouldn’t be on a label.

You CAN label a meat product as “Raised without hormones” to let the consumer know that no extra hormones were administered to the animal. Now, that means different things depending on which species the label is on.

What does that mean for Pork and Poultry?

In the US, it is against federal regulations to use hormones to raise pork and poultry.

Yep, its true.

 

Wait… what?

That’s right, no pork or poultry in the US is raised with hormones (other than the ones they make in their own bodies).

But you see it on pork and poultry labels?

Yep, meat companies are allowed to label their pork and poultry with a “No hormones administered” label. All pork and poultry in the US is eligible for the label. When they choose to use that label, they have to also write that “Federal Regulations prohibit the use of hormones in pork/ poultry.”



Some examples of pork and poultry labels that say that hormones are not allowed to be used.

 

So, what about beef?

In beef, it is legal to administer hormones to the cattle. They are similar to the hormones the cattle produce naturally and they allow them to grow larger, leaner, and more efficiently. They help the cattle grow more beef using fewer natural resources.

These hormones are actually administered in what we call an ‘Implant’ in their ear, not usually fed to them. There are several different options available, and they are usually applied in the feedlot or finishing phase of the animal’s life (the last few months) before harvest.

Just like anything given to the cattle, the FDA and USDA have rules and regulations that the farmers must follow concerning the implants. These rules will involve how long they can be administered and how long before harvest.

Back to the label. When the implants are not used, the beef company may say so on the label.  

Big Island Beef was really popular in Hawaii
It is raised without the use of hormones.

Very often the ‘raised without the use of hormones’ label will accompany another claim like Natural, Grass-fed, or Organic.

How much does it really matter?  

When beef raised without hormones was compared to that from cattle that was given hormones, the level of hormones in the beef was slightly different. In an 8-oz steak, the amount of estrogen found in steak from the implanted steer was 5.1 nanograms and that found in a non-implanted calf was 3.5 nanograms.

How big is a nanogram? One nanogram is one billionth of a gram. That 8 oz steak is a little over 226 grams.

 
This has been an awfully long post to answer a simple question, but people that know me expect that. I hope this helps to understand another meat label. Please let me know if you have any more questions.

 

Farmland

I normally don’t have movie reviews on my blog, but for one movie, I’m going to make an exception. Last night, I was invited to the Arkansas screening of the movie, Farmland.

Chances are, if you read this blog, you have an interest in how your food is produced, and if you’re interested in learning about how food is produced in this country, you need to see Farmland. A group called the Farmers and Rancher Alliance financed the film, and it was directed by Academy Award-winning director, James Moll.

Six young farmers were featured, from across the country, representing many aspects of modern American agriculture.

·         I have to say my favorite was Brad Bellah, a cattle rancher from Texas. His ranch is not too far from where I grew up, and the scenes from it made me gasp with reminders of home. I practically cheered when they pictured his family all decked out in the red and black of my alma mater, Texas Tech. He and I probably had many of the same professors. During the movie, his twins were born in the same hospital where I was born. Most importantly, he raises cattle for beef production. Our family also raises beef cattle.

·         The film traveled to Georgia to the poultry farm of Leighton Cooley. We watched him fill a barn with baby chicks and teach kids about chickens.

·         I was so impressed with the work ethic and drive of Margaret Schlass on her Certified Naturally Grown vegetable farm in Pennsylvania. She was the first-generation farmer in the group and she talked about how hard it was to start a farm from nothing.

·         Ryan Veldhuizen and his family raise pigs, corn and soybeans in Minnesota. He and his brother comically argue about tractors and land.

·         Large scale organic farming was represented by Sutton Morgan from California. He learned about farming produce from his dad, but turned his operation to all organic.

·         David Loberg took over his corn and soybean farm from his dad, and it’s tough to watch one of the sadder points of the movie when he talks about losing his dad to cancer.

This film doesn’t shy away from the hard subjects. They cover GMOs, Organic farming, pesticides and chemicals, hormones, antibiotics, and animal cruelty videos. It was interesting to hear all the different takes on those tough subjects.

The main take away from the film was that our food is produced by people. People who work hard and want the best for their families.

It’s hard to devote the time and energy to traveling to a farm for a tour. Lots of farmers would love to have you. This film is a great chance to spend about 70 minutes on farms with young farmers and learn how our food is produced.

Its a HUGE HUGE HUGE industry!

In my job, I have lots of great opportunities to see the inside of food processing facilities and farms that most people don’t get to see. That’s part of the fun of being a meat nerd. I am always amazed by the sheer size and scope of the industry when I get to see these facilities in action.



Mound of bacon.

 

For example, I was in a pork processing plant last summer and I was standing in the middle of the bacon slicing room. The slicers are these huge machines with circular blades like 4 feet across. They move so fast you can’t see them. They sliced pieces of bacon faster than I could count. I found a really cool  bacon slicing video on youtube.

At the plant I was visiting, I think there were six lines slicing bacon all running at the same time, at least 16 hours a day, 5 days a week. That is an incredible about of bacon. That plant harvested 19,000 pigs per day in 2011. Processors get about 15.4 lbs of cured bacon out of every hog, that’s 292,600 lbs of bacon, PER DAY, in one plant! The daily hog slaughter in the US in 2011 was 438,630 PER DAY, that’s 6.7 million pounds of bacon, PER DAY!!!  
Of course, there are 313 million people in the US and they usually eat three times a day, seven days a week. Not to even mention exports.

(See how I can get lost in the enormity of our food system! I’m just a meat head.)




A few of the 80,000 chicks on the Munyon Farm

We went on a tour of farms with some ladies a few weeks ago called Moms on the Farm Tour. Some local chicken farmers, Jared and Anita Munyon were nice enough to allow our group to tour their farm on a Saturday morning. They have four chicken houses where they raise broilers for a company called Simmons. Each of their chicken houses hold about 20,000 chickens. That’s 80,000 chickens on their farm! They will get about 5 sets of chickens each year, so this one farm produces 400,000 chickens each year. There are about 30,000 farms that raise chickens in the US, and 95% of them are family-owned like the Munyon’s Farm. Americans eat, on average about 83 pounds of chicken each year, so we need lots of them to keep us supplied in chicken nuggets, breasts, and chicken wings, over 37 billion pounds of chicken meat.




One of Vallie's beef cows. She has 13.

The beef industry is even more amazing to me because the cattle come from so many different farms in so many different places in the US. There were over 34 million calves born in 2012 and the US produced over 26 billion pounds of beef, but 90% of the beef farms in the US have fewer than 100 head and the average herd size is 44 head. That means a whole lot of people have input in the beef industry; from folks like my dad with 8 cows to the Deseret Cattle Co. in Florida with 42,000 cows. That’s right; the largest cattle ranch in the US sits between Disney World and Cape Canaveral.




Some students learning to make hotdogs.
A little slower than the commercial plants.

Then there are the hotdog numbers: It’s hard to know exactly how many hotdogs are consumed in this country, but it is estimated that Americans consume 20 billion hotdogs each year, which works out to about 70 hotdogs per person. On Memorial Day alone, US consumers will enjoy over 150 million hotdogs. That’s enough hotdogs to stretch from Washington DC to Los Angeles five times!!! During the summer time, US consumers will eat 7 billion hotdogs, or 818 each second.

 

All of this meat has to be produced by somebody. According to industry stats, the meat and poultry industries employ over 2 million workers paying them over $68 billion in wages. See what I mean about a HUGE industry?!?

When we buy our 2 or 3 pounds of meat at the grocery store or a steak a restaurant, it’s easy to forget that there are 313 million people in the US who are buying their few pounds of meat for this week, too. Our food system is huge! It’s really amazing to me that we can produce and distribute so much food each day.

It’s also sad to know that so much food is wasted each day, but that’s another day’s post.

Antibiotics in the meat supply: Residues vs. Resistance

There has been a lot of news coverage and proposed legislation lately calling for the banning of antibiotic use in farm animals. People can get very frightened when we talk about antibiotic resistant bacteria or antibiotics in the meat supply.

This has been an especially personal topic for me because our family recently had a scare with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In May, my daughter had a little lump behind her ear. I found it over a weekend and by Sunday evening, she was running a low fever, so we went to the doctor on Monday morning. By 6pm, we were admitted to the hospital with a very high fever and a freshly-lanced abscess. It took 2 of days of testing, and she was diagnosed with MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus). She spent three nights in the hospital on IV antibiotics. Now, she’s fine and back to her little rotten self.

MRSA - Antibiotic-resistant Staph

Experiences like ours are very scary, and I know there are a lot of parents with much worse stories to tell than mine. However, most people know very little about antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA. When they hear about antibiotics in relation to our food supply, they don’t know what to think.

First, what exactly are we talking about?

Antibiotics administered to animals headed to the food supply.

  

Why are animals given antibiotics?

There are two main reasons why animals are given antibiotics.

1. The most obvious reason is that animals are given antibiotics when they are sick or injured to fight infection.

Most people agree that it would be inhumane to withhold a drug from a sick animal and allow it to suffer. Even organic farms and antibiotic-free farms have a protocol in place to treat a sick animal and remove it from their herd.

2. Sometimes animals are given antibiotics to prevent them from getting sick. 

Just like kids, young animals are prone to infection. In some farms, animals live very close to one another and they are not very clean creatures (you just can’t teach a piglet to wash his hooves), so if one gets sick, they could all get sick very quickly. That could spell disaster for a farmer, so some farms choose to feed a low level of antibiotics to prevent disease.

3. Some antibiotics are given to improve how fast and efficiently animals grow.

There are new rules about antibiotics from FDA as of June 2015. I'm doing some research on them to make sure I understand them before I share what they mean in this post. Thanks for bearing with me. 

  

You may have heard a statistic in a news story that said that 80% of the antibiotics sold in the US are given to livestock animals. That number is largely disputed. First, it is impossible to know how many antibiotics are sold in the US, for use in livestock or in humans. Second, a large percentage of drugs used by farmers are not useful in human medicine. Lastly, livestock represent a larger population of bodies than do humans. And, cows and pigs are a lot bigger than humans; pound for pound, they need more antibiotics. What is the real number? Who knows?

What about antibiotics in my meat?

When people in the food industry talk about antibiotics, there are two terms they use: antibiotic residues and antibiotic resistant bacteria.

‘Antibiotic residues’ refers to actual antibiotic chemicals that have been given to the animals, either fed or given as injections, remaining in the edible tissue (meat, fat, or even milk).

The Food and Drug Administration regulates the approval and use of antibiotics in animal medicine. Any antibiotic that is given to a food animal has a specified ‘withdrawal time’ which is the amount of time that the antibiotic has to be withdrawn from the animal before it is slaughtered. These times are based on how long it takes the animal to process the antibiotic so that it is eliminated from the body. Farmers must wait to slaughter an animal for that amount of time after giving the antibiotic to the animal or they will be breaking the law.

The Food Safety Inspection Service (part of USDA) monitors the meat supply and tests for antibiotic residues in the meat. The levels of antibiotic residues found in the meat supply are very low (below 1%), and tests are done on a worst-case scenario basis, which means FSIS tests the tissues that are most likely to contain antibiotic residues (liver and kidneys) and they test a larger percentage of suspect animals (old cows, animals with injection scars, etc.). Although the levels are not zero, I am not really worried about antibiotic residues in meat.

A group called the US Farmers Ranchers Alliance has a video of experts discussing antibiotic residues.

‘Antibiotic-resistant bacteria’ refers to bacteria that are not easily killed by common antibiotics, they are resistant.

How do bacteria become resistant to antibiotics?

Bacteria are everywhere, and there are millions of species, strains, and serotypes… all fancy ways of saying ‘different’ bacteria. Bacteria have a genetic code, just like humans, and they change and evolve with each generation. Unlike humans, they multiply at crazy-fast rates, so their genes can change at fast rates. When you introduce something to kill the bacteria like antibiotics, most of them die, but a few live. The ones that live may have had something in their genetic code that allowed them to survive the antibiotic treatment. All the other bacteria are gone, so that leaves more room and food for the left over bacteria to grow. When they grow, they pass their antibiotic-resistant genes to the next generations. Eventually, those antibiotic-resistant bacteria are spread around, and found all over the place. We have to learn to fight them in different ways.

A study from 2003-2004 found that MRSA (the bacteria my daughter fought) was in 1.5% of American noses. That was 8 years ago, and the bacteria have been spreading since then, so the numbers are probably larger now.

Are antibiotic-resistant bacteria in my food and how did they get there?

Yep. Antibiotic –resistant bacteria are in our food supply. They are everywhere.

Our food is handled by several different people and goes through several steps to get to our plates, and bacteria can be introduced at any of those steps. Some people want to blame the use of antibiotics in animal feed and that may be part of it, but it is likely that several actions contribute to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Can it make me and my family sick?

There are some forms of dangerous food borne pathogens like Salmonella and E.coli that have developed some resistance to antibiotics. That means that if you get one of these bacterial infections in your gut, it will be harder for doctors to help you fight them. But, even the non-resistant forms of these bacteria are very dangerous and can make you very, very sick.

What can I do?

Antibiotic resistant bacteria are susceptible to foodsafety measures such as cooking food thoroughly and keeping raw food away from cooked food. 

• Cooking kills antibiotic-resistant bacteria just like it kills antibiotic-susceptible bacteria. Use a meat thermometer to be sure you cookmeat thoroughly. 
• Hot soap and water wash antibiotic-resistant bacteria off of counter tops and utensils. 
• Antibiotic-resistant bacteria cannot grow as well in cold environments just like the antibiotic susceptible strains, so getting fresh food and leftovers chilled quickly is very important.
• Antibiotic-resistant bacteria can’t jump through the air from raw food to cooked food, so keep raw and ready-to-eat foods separate.

  

Anything else?

The main two bacteria species that we hear about when we talk about antibiotic resistance are Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium difficile. Although they are huge issues in the medical industry, the CDC does not see them as a risk in the meat industry. Food safety practices should keep you from getting sick from these bacteria in your food.

However, you may have heard that MRSA has been found in 6.6% of pork samples in a US study. I emailed the author of that study for this post. She was really nice and said that the worry with MRSA in meat is not as much about getting sick from it being in your food as it is about the MRSA spreading from the raw meat to other surfaces and being introduced to a scratch or an open sore and causing severe skin infections, like the one my daughter had.

Lots of bacteria from raw meat can cause skin infections if they are introduced to an opening in the skin, and these antibiotic-resistant ones are very hard to fight. So, my advice is to be extra careful with raw meat, especially with children (face it, they are dirty little monsters. I’ve seen mine lick the bottom of her shoe.).

Keep raw meat separate from other food from the time to pick it out at the grocery store until you cook it.  

• Use a plastic bag to keep raw meat away from other food items and away from surfaces like the bottom of the grocery cart.
• Wash your hands after handling raw meat
• Wash down the countertop with warm soapy water after it came into contact with raw meat (even in the package)
• If you have a cut on your hands, wear gloves when handling raw meat (like when you make hamburger patties.)
• Don’t let very small children handle or be in contact with raw meat

My friend Karen sent me this picture of her grocery cart. Her roast is in its package away from the rest of her food. Looks like she put a piece of butcher paper under it. Way to go Karen!

There have been studies connecting antibiotic-resistant E. coli bacteria from chicken to urinary tract infections. If I have been handling raw meat, I wash my hands before AND after going to the restroom.

I called and asked the pediatrician if there was any way to know where the MRSA that infected my daughter came from, and there was not. The doctor told us that lots of people are infected with it and kids ‘pick their nose, then pick their wounds.’ Gross.

What about buying meat from animals that have not been given antibiotics?

There are companies and farms that offer meat from animals that have never been given antibiotics. I’ve talked about such programs in a previous blog post. If you choose to buy those products because you want to support the practice of never giving animals antibiotics, that’s fine, but you should know that meat from these farms are not guaranteed to be free from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The meat is not any safer than the meat that does not make that claim. A recent study found that the levels of Staphylococcus aureus and MRSA in pork were the same regardless of it being from pig farms that did not use antibiotics.

Denmark has banned the use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics and the results have not been positive for their pork industry. Jeff Fowle, a rancher and blogger from California discusses the ramifications of Denmark's decision in his blog.

Like I said earlier, there is lots of info on the internet about antibiotics (residues and resistant bacteria) in meat and in general.

I don’t know all the answers. Here is a list of a few more resources if you are interested.

MeatMythCrusher Video with Dr. Keith Belk

National Residue Program Fact Sheet from AMI

AMI Fact Sheet about antibiotics


NCBA facts on antibiotics

CDC page on antibiotic resistance

Antimicrobial resistance learning site for vets

FAQ from AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association)