Chipotle E coli Outbreak Causes?

Meat is often the source of ridicule when it comes sudden deficiencies in consumers' health. However, one rarely thinks of the effects vegetables could just of likely had an affect on you if not handled properly or safely. For instance, there was a recent e coli outbreak at several Chipotle establishments and people were quick to blame the processed meat products, without even considering the highly processed vegetables. Naturally, there has been a lot of controversy over this relatively recent outbreak. Although, a lot of sources are claiming that they have been unable to pin down the source of the E. coli out break. I would still like to provide all of you some of the facts so that you can come to your own conclusions.

Linked here is one of my all time favorite articles on the matter of foodborne illnesses. The author Jordan Caba brings to the readers attention the unfounded biased of consumers at the supermarket and how we tend to be more wary of our meat products rather than vegetables. When in reality a report issued by the Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration or IFSAC revealed that we consumers need to be "vigilant" in the vegetable aisle. According to their report, "Seedy vegetables, such as tomatoes or zucchini, accounted for 18 percent of Salmonella cases compared to fruit at 12 percent, eggs at 12 percent, chicken at 10 percent, beef at nine percent, pork at eight percent, and sprouts at eight percent. Beef and vegetable row crops, like leafy vegetables, also accounted for over 80 percent of all E. coli cases."

Notice how  vegetables and fruits are just as likely to be the cause of certain foorbourne illnesses if not more likely. Now, I don't want to persuade you to stop eating vegetables, I just want to make a fair case for the livestock industry and bring to light the misconceptions of the handling practices for meat. For instance, this article written by David Katz for the Huffington post doesn't even come close to factual with today's industry standards. In the article there are passages that state things like, "Because we eat quite a lot of meat, quite a lot of meat must be produced. Large-volume meat production means large farms, large herds, and large, centralized, highly efficient processing plants. At best, this all translates into relative neglect of any individual steer, and a relative inability to inspect the quality of every steak. At worst, it offers reminders of the “jungle” to which Upton Sinclair introduced us all at the turn of the 20th century." What Kratz fails to mention here is the change in industry standards since Upton Sinclair's book titled The Jungle. For example, I personally work at a Meats Science lab and there we base our entire operation on industry standards and federal inspections to ensure a safe and desirable product for our buyers.

Yet, people still jump to the conclusion that contaminations only occur in the handling of meat. Even the burrito chain, Chipotle, believes the E. coli outbreak stemmed from their Australian beef. Yet, even though the Center for Disease Control came to the conclusion that the outbreak source was unknown, the government agency believes it stemmed from contaminated produce such as spinach, sprouts, and lettuce. Whitney Filloon covers this topic at www.eater.com.