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No one deserves a last danceAnother E. coli tragedy is making national news. A story in the New York Times last week, shared a story of a woman who was infected with E. coli after eating a hamburger patty. She spent nine weeks in a coma and is now paralyzed from the waist down. As a children's dance instructor, her world is shattered. It is a tragic story and has garnered a lot of attention on a national stage. The strain of E. coli the woman was infected with, was a particularly harsh strain. This incident, and others like it, bring the E. coli issue to the forefront again. The bad news for cattle producers is: it gives consumers a reason to mistrust them and the end product that originally comes from their farms. This mistrust is fueled by misleading statements, in the media. In covering the story on ABC's morning show, Good Morning America, Dr. Richard Besser, tells Diane Sawyer, the only way to cook meat safely is to "cook it to the point where most people wouldn't want to eat it." Dr. Besser serves as senior health and medical editor for ABC News. Previously, however, he was a director at Centers for Disease Control. He should know that 160¬°F is the optimal temperature for cooking a burger safely. He missed a great opportunity to discuss proper handling and cooking techniques with the GMA audience. Either he didn't know, or he preferred to focus on scare tactics instead of the facts. Dr. Besser also told the audience the only way consumers can be certain not to get E. coli is to make sure the beef is ground from one piece of beef. That's not exactly true, however. Yes, it might reduce the chance of the ground beef being infected, but it wouldn't be a guarantee. We know through sound science that the only way to stop E. coli is through proper handling and cooking techniques. And as misleading statements were being tossed about, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack did little to defend the safety of the U.S. food supply. His statement focused on the administration's Food Safety Working Group, instead of assuring consumers the food supply is safe and that this incident was extremely rare. Thankfully, the beef industry has been working on reducing the incidence of E. coli for many years. Fifteen years ago, a Blue Ribbon Task Force set about improving food safety. Today, the Beef Industry Food Safety Council combines cattlemen, beef processing companies, researchers, wholesalers and retailers to develop "industry-wide, science-based strategies to solve the problems of foodborne pathogens in beef." The effort has been successful. From 1996 to 2004, the incidence of E. coli was significantly reduced and has remained low since then, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The work is obviously not complete. The beef industry invests more than $350 million per year in implementing safety programs, part of which comes from the dollars that beef producers invest through the Beef Checkoff. Thankfully, the work is already underway on our end. But producers should do what they can to keep the focus on food safety. We need to be sure that our health professionals--experts like Dr. Besser--are educated, as well. We need them to speak about the science of E. coli, so that the public listens and remembers the basic tenets of food safety. Beef producers can help by continuing to support the food safety efforts of the Beef Checkoff, speaking out on behalf of the safety of the beef and implementing safety practices on their farm. No one, least of all beef producers, wants to see another tragedy due to E. coli. Holly Martin can be reached by phone at 620-227-1806, or by e-mail at hmartin@hpj.com.
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