ot in GUT: Studies Fail to Quell Concerns Over Gas Treatment of Meat - keep it red as it spoils

[Guest guest]

The adverse effects emanating from so-called " regulatory " agencies

continue unabated. As packaged meat's bacterial content rises, risk of

infection increases. In too many ways modernity ensures dysbiosis. Drink

sewage when wastewater overflows, swim in sewage-contaminated beaches, eat

meat with enhanced bacterial content. Now, if probiotics can be removed

from the market, then sales of gastro meds ought increase.

once again breathing toxic air in Estes Park

* * * *

Studies Fail to Quell Concerns Over Gas Treatment of Meat

By Rick Weiss

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, July 23, 2006; A08

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/22/AR2006072200672.\

html

A bitter regulatory battle over the safety of a packaging system that can

keep meat looking fresh long past its shelf life is escalating, amid

complaints that the industry misinterpreted recent research reports to

bolster its case.

At issue is the growing practice of spiking sealed packages of meat with

small doses of carbon monoxide. The gas is harmless at the concentrations

being used, but it can keep meat looking bright red and fresh even as it

spoils.

In a series of largely unpublicized decisions, the Agriculture Department

and the Food and Drug Administration have allowed use of the gas in

various packaging systems. Proponents, including the three major meat

producers, say the process is safe and will help reduce the $1 billion the

industry loses every year from having to discount or discard meat that has

begun to turn brown but is still safe to eat.

Opponents, including consumer groups and a company that makes a competing

preservation product, charge that the process, banned by the European

Union, can deceive consumers into thinking meat is fresher than it is.

In addition, the opponents say, date labels that the USDA requires for the

treated meat -- which instruct consumers to " use or freeze " treated ground

beef within 21 days after the package was sealed -- give the public false

assurance the meat will remain unspoiled that long. Although the

government does not require " use or freeze by " dates on meats not treated

with carbon monoxide, most packagers use them anyway -- with time scales

generally in the range of 11 to 14 days for ground meat.

Kalsec Inc., a Kalamazoo, Mich., maker of spice extracts, has petitioned

the FDA and the USDA to ban the process. Its rosemary extracts have long

been used to slow the browning of meat -- though only by a couple of days

-- in a process that also involves pumping high levels of oxygen into the

package. Extract sales have begun to decline as packagers switch to carbon

monoxide.

Of the new studies, the two most thorough were conducted by researchers at

Texas Tech University in Lubbock. They were presented last month at a

scientific meeting, and the results were announced in a university news

release that proclaimed, " Despite Carbon Monoxide, Beef Consumers Still

Safe. "

In one study, microbiologist Mindy Brashears inoculated meat with

disease-causing bacteria and compared the microbes' growth in different

packaging systems. The results showed that meat sealed in packages with

carbon monoxide had less bacterial growth than meat wrapped in air with

traditional plastic wrap.

Randy Huffman, a spokesman for the American Meat Institute, said

Brashears's work vindicates the carbon monoxide process.

But in an interview, Brashears said the benefit was only in comparison

with traditional packaging. Carbon monoxide showed no advantage over meat

sealed in high oxygen with Kalsec's extracts.

In the second Texas Tech study, J. Chance , an assistant professor

of meat science, asked a panel of trained sniffers to judge the freshness

of meat of various ages that had been stored in different packaging

systems. He concluded that consumers would not be deceived into eating

spoiled meat that had been kept red by carbon monoxide because it, too,

has a distinctive smell when it spoils.

" You cannot mask odor, " said.

Huffman said the results confirmed the industry's long-standing claim that

smell is a better indicator of spoilage than color. The industry says

consumers should use smell and the " use or freeze by " date as the best

indicators of whether meat is fresh.

But 17 percent of the trained panelists in 's study detected

" unpleasant odors " in carbon-monoxide-treated meat that had been in a

refrigerated case for just 14 days, calling into question the products'

21-day freshness claim.

Don Berdahl, vice president and laboratory director at Kalsec, said those

findings are in sync with his own less formal study. Berdahl went to

supermarkets and bought more than 100 packages of ground beef -- some

packaged with carbon monoxide and others with high oxygen and Kalsec's

extracts. He put them all in a cooler and took them to S & J Laboratories

Inc. of Portage, Mich.

Documents Kalsec submitted to the FDA and the USDA on June 14 reported

that the samples treated with carbon monoxide had much higher bacterial

counts, on average, than the others. In some samples, the filing notes,

" the high bacterial levels were indicative of spoilage, even though the

meat was within the labeled 'use or freeze by' date listed on the

package. "

The July issue of Consumer Reports describes a similar finding. The

magazine's investigators took bacterial counts on 10 samples of locally

purchased ground beef and steaks that had been treated with the gas. All

the meat looked red, but two had spoiled by their " use or freeze by " dates

and one " was on the brink of spoilage " one day before its stamped date.

Berdahl acknowledged that both his study and the one by Consumer Reports

have limited value. Among other issues, the only carbon-monoxide-treated

meats he could purchase were closer to their " use by " dates than the other

samples, which might account for their higher bacteria counts.

Nonetheless, he said, that raises the question of why the USDA allows

gas-treated ground beef to be labeled fresh for 21 days.

The USDA allowed that limit for carbon-monoxide-treated meat based on data

presented by Minnesota-based Precept Foods LLC, a major proponent and user

of the process.

The problem, Berdahl said, is that real life does not mimic the ideal

conditions in Precept's studies, in which meat was kept at or below the

recommended 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Studies have found that one-third of

store refrigerators are at 45 degrees or higher, 5 percent are warmer than

55 degrees and one-fifth of home refrigerators are above 50 degrees.

Food-safety officials have repeatedly said that their regulatory decisions

are supposed to reflect real, rather than ideal, conditions.

Huffman of the Meat Institute dismissed Berdahl's suggestion that

carbon-monoxide-treated meat is at increased risk of being spoiled by its

" use or freeze by " date.

" Well over 100 million packages of [the product] have been sold and

consumed in the U.S. " he said, and none has been linked to any outbreak of

food poisoning or store returns. He called the issue a " manufactured

controversy " and the risks " hypothetical. "

Tarantino, director of the FDA's Office of Food Additive Safety, and

C. Post, USDA director of labeling and consumer protection, said

the agencies are reviewing Kalsec's petition, including the new data, but

could not say how long that will take.

With the agencies also now considering a new application from a meat

company to use higher concentrations of carbon monoxide than are currently

used, several consumer groups are saying it is time to make the reviews

public.

" What's been thwarted here is the process, " said Donna Rosenbaum, a board

member of Safe Tables Our Priority in Burlington, Vt., a food-safety group

formed after several children died from eating tainted Jack-in-the-Box

hamburgers. " We really should have had all this laid out by the agencies,

but none of that was allowed to happen. "

Some stores already refuse to sell the gas-treated meats, and the Chicago

City Council has held two hearings on a proposal to ban them within city

limits.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

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