Hacker News Reader

Comment by murbard2 | Hacker News Reader

The part about E.Coli in burger reminds me of a very unfortunate state of affair. I like my burgers rare, they just taste much better this way. I eat them that way because at my age (32) the risk isn't too great.

There is a way to make ground beef extremely safe for consumption, without cooking it to oblivion (a.k.a FDA guidelines). That technique is irradiation. Unfortunately, people are very squeamish about the idea of having their meat irradiated, and mandatory labeling laws mean that it's very hard to find irradiated meat.

As a result, people get into the habit of eating overcooked burgers, which further reduces the potential demand for irradiated meat, etc. Shame :(

View on HN

The bit about E. coli is also a bit of a scare tactic -- while E. coli outbreaks have gotten a decent amount of public press in the past decade or two, they dont even show up in the top 5 food-borne pathogens, by infection rate [1]. (They are however #5 in infections causing hospitalization.)

Most foodborne illnesses are actually caused by pathogens on fruits and vegetables [2], especially leafy ones [3]. Of course, this is not a reason to avoid eating produce. The majority of these diseases can be traced to their (human) food handlers, and fruits and vegetables are more likely to be eaten uncooked (or less cooked) than meats.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/2011-foodborne-estimates....

[2] http://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution-image.html#fo...

[3] http://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution-1998-2008.htm...

Find a local farmer whose meat handling you trust to reduce the likelihood of contamination.

Otherwise, get a steak, wipe it with an ammonia solution, rinse it, and grind it up yourself. The E.Coli, if it exists, is going to be on the outside of the steak; the ammonia wash will kill the vast majority of it, and you get the benefit of fresher hamburger.

Alternatively, freeze your steak by dipping it in liquid nitrogen. A normal freezer isn't sufficient to kill E.Coli, but a liquid nitrogen dip will do the job. :)

Amonia has a very strong & bad smell though? Even if you wash off 99.9% it will still smell bad.

They sell irradiated ground beef at Wegmans and it's wonderful to be able to cook it medium rare.

The push against irradiated beef happens because it'd allow most common levels of food handling mishaps to be sold safely without getting people sick, and as the article states, most meat is already contaminated with feces.

So many corners could be cut without causing problems, but standard irradiation can't kill prions. (They don't have DNA to irradiate.)

So theoretically you reduce the quality of food, increase the profit for the meat packing industry, reduce the frequency of food borne illness, but increase the damage when it does happen.

Irradiation really isn't a cut and dried benefit.

There's a fairly easy regulatory solution to that - don't allow irradiated-only production lines.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com