Escherichia coli 0157, hamburger

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (1993). Update Multistate Outbreak of Escherichia coli 01S7 H7 Infections from Hamburgers—Western United States, 1992-1993. MMWR, 42(14), 258-263. 

Tellinghuisen, T. L., Hamburger, A. E., Fisher, B. R., Ostendorp, R., and Kuhn, R. J. (1999). In vitro assembly of alphavirus cores by using nucleocapsid protein expressed in Escherichia coli. J. Virol. 73, 5309-5319. 

But Europe is not alone in the world the Food and drug administration (FDA) approved for instance, on December 1997, the use in the US of irradiation to kill harmful bacteria such as Escherichia coli in beef, lamb and pork. The FDA was acting on a three years old petition since 1994, but gave the allowance after the recall last August of 11,000 tons of hamburger meat feared tainted with E. coli. If applied in France, the accident, which occurred in South-West of France in late 2005, could not have happened. 

Moreover, there is considerable pressure on government agencies to make the food we eat safer. Consumers remember clearly the deadly problems created by ingesting Escherichia coli 0157/H7 in contaminated hamburger [9]. They want governmental protection to prevent this from recurring [10,11]. 

We at BioScience Laboratories, Inc. have developed an approach to testing the antimicrobial effectiveness of food handler handwash products in a worst-case situation, which we believe will provide accurate, precise, and reliable data. It is based on the current Healthcare Personnel Handwash Evaluation published in the FDA s Tentative Final Monograph (TFM) with two exceptions [7]. First, Escherichia coli (ATCC 11229) is substituted for Serratia marcescens (ATCC 14756) as the hand-contaminating microorganism, and second, the hands are inoculated not by pipette transfer, but by hand-kneading E. co/i-contaminated hamburger. This provides a worst-case simulation of the food industry s handcleansing requirements. 

CDC. 1993. Preliminary report Foodborne outbreak o Escherichia coli 0157 FI7 infections from hamburgers, Western United States. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 42 851-886. 

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