re: food irradiation related question

["DAVE GILMORE" <DGILMORE@navajo.astate.edu>]

Scott D. Kniffin wrote
> I think that the argument to fling back would be if your kitchen is so
> dirty that it can support a colony of that 0157 E. coli on hte counter top,
> I wouldn't eat there in the first place.  Furthermore, if all meat were
> irradiated (I can dream, can't I?) and the food prep area of the
> kitchen/grocery/home were throughly 
> cleaned top to bottom, inside and out, recontamination should be very,
> very,  difficult.  

The reason the problem is hamburger and not steaks is that the 
grinding process mixes the bacterial contamination throughout the 
entire food.  The inside of a steak comes sterile, but the inside of 
a hamburger patty does not.  Most hamburger grinding occurs in the grocery 
stores, so if only half the meat supply is irradiated and the butcher 
doesn't disinfect the grinding apparatus between loads of meat, 
irradiated food could still get contaminated.  If all meat is 
irradiated (or even most), that would have a tremendously beneficial 
effect, but even irradiating some of the meat supply will still 
signifcantly reduce food poisoning  _in conjunction with proper 
sanitary practices_!

HANDBELL PEOPLE have all gone campan-

David F. Gilmore
Assistant Professor of Environmental Biology   
P.O. Box 599, Dept. of Biological Sciences  
Arkansas State University 
State University, AR 72467
dgilmore@navajo.astate.edu
ph  501-972-3082    fax 501-972-2638