Tainted meats point to superbug C. diff in food: Study finds gut germ in 40 percent of grocery meats

[RamboLiberal]

Source: MSNBC

A potentially deadly intestinal germ increasingly found in hospitals is also showing up in a more unsavory setting: grocery store meats.

More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for Clostridium difficile, a gut bug known as C. diff., according to newly complete analysis of 2006 data collected by a University of Arizona scientist.

Nearly 30 percent of the contaminated samples of ground beef, pork and turkey and ready-to-eat meats like summer sausage were identical or closely related to a super-toxic strain of C. diff blamed for growing rates of illness and death in the U.S. — raising the possibility that the bacterial infections may be transmitted through food.

“These data suggest that domestic animals, by way of retail meats, may be a source of C. difficile for human infection,” said J. Glenn Songer, a professor of veterinary science at the Tucson school, who talked with msnbc.com about work now under review by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

-----

C. diff is a tricky bug, hard to kill with anything but bleach in the hospital and able to survive most cooking techniques in the kitchen. And, unlike scary infections like E. coli 0157:H7, which has transmitted illness through foods from ground beef to fresh spinach, C. diff can't be traced quickly to its source.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27774614/

[kestrel91316]

1. C. difficile does not cause "food poisoning", however. It can lead to

GI disease associated with antibiotic treatment when the population of normal flora in the gut is disrupted.

I am curious as to whether this is a NEW development, or whether they only recently started looking for it and WHOOPS, there it was. If it has ALWAYS been present in meats, there's not even a story here. Sort of like "News flash: WATER CAN DROWN YOU!!!!!".

[truedelphi]

10. But WATER CAN DROWN YOU!! can't it?? But I too find stories like

This one a cause of puzzlement. Why now and not six months ago? Etc.

[SemperEadem]

12. because Obama is now president elect

and it's his fault that this has shown up... /sarcasm.

[happygoluckytoyou]

20. sorry even THIS SHIT is still on Ws shift ! ! !

[Fovea]

21. and that is teh entire answer

eight years worth of impacted feces, now doing what needed to happen.

It won't smell good for a long time around here.

[DJ13]

2. This is the kind of issue that will eventually force us to irradiate fresh foods

[Gormy Cuss]

23. No, but it's the kind of press story that will be used to turn the tide of public opinion on it.

What stories like these should force is a crackdown of meat processing and food handling procedures.

[Grinchie]

25. Did you know that Canola was toxic until it was mutated by Irradiation?

A little known fact is that Canola never was a traditional vegetable oil, but experiments in Mutagenesis caused it to become the most widely used Oil seed in the world.

If you are old enough, you may remember that all you could buy was Cottonseed Oil, Lard, Sunflower Oil, Peanut Oil, etc. Then all of a sudden, Canola is the rage, but they never mentioned the part that it was a mutation caused by radiation.

These are the people that feed America.

[WhiteTara]

33. no wonder I never used the stuff

Expeller pressed organic oils is more my choice.

[CountAllVotes]

3. just another good reason to avoid eating meats

especially prepared meats. :puke:

:kick:

[ecstatic]

4. True, but what about all the tainted spinach, tomatoes and lettuce?

:shrug:

[SemperEadem]

13. life would be great if I didn't have to eat.

[Grinchie]

26. Simple answer, provide bathrooms with toilet paper to the laborers

Also, teaching people to wash or cook all food is another important step, but that's asking too much I believe.

In the south pacific, the leaves of certain trees are used exclusively for Toilet paper. I'm sure that the tradition is imported with foreign labor, even though American can't think outside their own comfy "Flush and Forget" environment.

[valerief]

5. How long can a person survive on only quinoa? I haven't heard horror stories about quinoa yet.

Then again, it needs to be cooked in water and water is filthy, so there you go! We be dead ducks.

:puke:

[devinkay]

7. FLASH!

Quinoa found to contain abundance of worm buggers! }(

[valerief]

18. Ee-yew! What's a worm bugger? Something that buggers worms? nt

[mcg]

6. There are plenty of vegetarian sources of protein, for example tofu,

and others. Something to consider. There are a lot of good reasons to cut down on meat consumption.

[RamboLiberal]

8. Vegetarian unless you raise your own not entirely safe either

From OP:

But Gerding also noted that C. diff has been found in many places other than hospitals and meat counters, including water sources and soil.

“We actually wouldn’t know if a carrot in the dirt would have it just as much as hamburger,” Gerding said.

And of course we've seen outbreaks of E Coli from vegetables and fruits that were contaminated. In my area several years ago we had a devastating outbreak of hepatitis traced back to green onions.

[SemperEadem]

14. GM seeds

agribusiness has tried to do its darndest to engineer food into something it's not. Even the vegetables are not safe unless you can find true seeds--and I'll bet they're crazy-expensive now.

[Grinchie]

27. Tofu is Soy -- Soy is 85% GMO sourced these days.

You'd be lucky to find Organic non GMO Soy, or Tofu made from it.

[Tektonik]

35. Actually it's not hard at all

of the 85% of the non-organic, GMO soy there exists, lots of it isn't even used for human consumption. The portion that is used for human consumption end up mostly as soybean oil, soy lecithin, etc which are used in millions of things.

Specialty vegetarian and vegan foods tend to be made of non GMO, organic soy, so it ends up being more likely that one with a regular American diet is consuming GMO soy than a vegetarian or vegan.

[Sunnyone]

9. Probiotics Will Help

The remedy to this problem is using a good probiotic, which put's the good bacteria back into the gut. I use Natren and Dr.Ohara's , I don't work for these company just giving some helpful health info.

[Lance_Boyle]

11. probiotics will not help with a c diff. infection.

they can be useful following an antibiotic regimen, but only to replenish the naturally-existing gut flora that the antibiotics indiscriminately kill. They will not make you better if you get a c diff. infection.

[Goldom]

15. well...

no, probiotics won't kill c. diff. (you need special antibiotics for that), but when I (may) have had a minor case of c diff after being on a lot of antibiotics, the GI doc (a D.O., btw) actually prescribed me to simply take probiotics, to naturally overwhelm it. the bugs themselves may still exist, but they do in most people without causing trouble.

[truedelphi]

17. Will anitbiotics help with it?? n/t

[Joszef Pelikan]

22. Yes

C. Diff is susceptible to a few antibiotics vancomycin for example. Though I agree with the above poster that probiotics are a good preventative measure especially after taking a broad spectrum antibiotic.

[du_grad]

31. Treatment of C. difficile

http://www.emedicine.com/med/TOPIC3412.HTM

Good article here. Metronidazole (trade name Flagyl) is also used in addition to Vancomycin. The organism was discovered, according to the article, in 1935. I am a microbiology technologist. We do a LOT of tests for C. difficile at our lab. Please note that symptoms of C. diff. can present up to two months AFTER your round of antibiotics. Do not ignore this if you have recently been hospitalized. It is the toxin that is produced that is the problem with this bug. The problem is that Clostridia, in general, are spore-formers. The spores protect the bacteria from destruction. It takes a lot of bleach to kill the spores on surfaces. I think the fact that they have found this bug in meat is interesting. I would wonder also how long this has been present in meat. Decades?? Just because the bug is there doesn't mean it causes an infection. The antibiotics are what disturbs the normal bacterial flora. See quote below (and read the entire article - lots of good information):

"C difficile colitis results from a disturbance of the normal bacterial flora of the colon, colonization with C difficile, and release of toxins that cause mucosal inflammation and damage. Antibiotic therapy is the key factor that alters the colonic flora. Hospitalized patients are the primary targets of C difficile infection. C difficile is present in 2-3% of healthy adults and in as many as 70% of healthy infants. Treatment of asymptomatic carriers is not recommended. Colonization occurs by the fecal-oral route. C difficile forms heat-resistant spores that can persist in the environment for several months to years. Outbreaks of C difficile diarrhea may occur in hospitals and other outpatient facilities where contamination with spores is prevalent. Normal gut flora resists colonization and overgrowth with C difficile. Antibiotic use, which suppresses the normal flora, allows proliferation of C difficile.

Pathogenic strains of C difficile produce 2 distinct toxins. Toxin A is an enterotoxin, and toxin B is a cytotoxin. Both are high–molecular weight proteins capable of binding to specific receptors on the intestinal mucosal cells. Receptor-bound toxins gain intracellular entry where they catalyze a specific alteration of Rho proteins, small glutamyl transpeptidase (GTP)–binding proteins that assist in actin polymerization, cytoskeletal architecture, and cell movement. Both toxin A and toxin B appear to play a role in the pathogenesis of C difficile colitis in humans..."

[Grinchie]

28. A friend of mine was ill with CDiff for over 2 years

She caught it while visiting her father in a VA Hospital.

This was about 4 years ago, and eventually they prescribed a new treatment of Monoclonal Antibodies which apparently worked.

This thing with CDiff is that it is very very common, only now we are seeing strains which not only take over unpopulated niches in our normal gut florae, but also produce multiple toxins which we react to more violently.

CDiff has been part of our digestive systems forever, but now we have a new strain, which leads me to believe that the GMO food we eat helped it mutate into a more virulent form, or perhaps incorporate Antibiotic resistance from the GMO food.

[Joszef Pelikan]

29. GMO food is the cause?

I would think that feeding livestock antibiotics might cause C diff to become antibiotic resistant. I don't see how GMO foods would effect C Diff.

[truedelphi]

32. Isn't it strange how we are suddenly worried about so many

New diseases and new stronger strains of older diseases? All within a comparatively short time period after the introduction of GMO.

Of course,t aht its n't o rule out other causes. But still I think looking into the relationship of GMO and the new super bug this and super bug that might be worthwhile in terms of what is going on.

[StClone]

16. Ever heard of Kefir?

[crikkett]

19. EXCEPT WE DON'T GET TO KNOW WHICH GROCERY CHAINS

WERE TESTED.


For crying out loud, this is the state of journalism today.

What the hell.

:banghead: :grr:

[Grinchie]

24. My belief is that CDiff is incorporating certain unhealthy traits from the GMO Food we eat

Their is a now undisputed fact that simple organisms such as Bacteria can incorporate genetic traits directly from the environment in which they live.

This is called Horizontal Gene Transfer, and for many years, Science absolutely denied that this was possible. Now the proof is in the open after being suppressed for decades.

The ramifications for Horizontal Gene Transfer are so terrifying, that if more people knew about it the GMO industry would be abolished in regard to Foods, whether it would be for nourishment or the production of pharmaceutical use, such as a certain type of GMO Rice that creates "Human Serum Albumin"! Or the Corn that caused sterility in mice. These are organisms that are in know way possible via natural selection, I.E. Traditional plant breeding through cross pollination or grafting.

The best example I can make is that of a bacteria that we rely upon in our digestive systems were to pick up the gene that produces the CRY1x toxin, which is a pesticide produced by genes from the Bacillus Thuringensus otherwise known as BT. i.e. BT Corn from Monsanto. This previously benign, beneficial bacteria now is creating minute amounts of BT Toxin 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for your entire life.

Remember, BT Toxin is a registered pesticide, yet have they ever tested the long term effects of chronic dosage on humans? Not directly, but we all have been unknowing Guinea Pigs in this respect by allowing GMO ingrediants to not require MANDATORY Labeling. The GMO industries knows that Mandatory Labeling of GMO ingrediants would lead to consumer awareness, and open the door to massive litigation when the dirty little secret comes out that we are being poisoned slowly over time, and the sanctity of our food supply and agricultural systems have been compromised in the name of profit.

Mandatory Labeling of GMO has seen huge opposition in terms of money from the Corporate interests, and we all have to demand that we have a right to know what is going into our food.

[burrowowl]

30. Find a real butcher

Pre-packaged meat is a real hotbed of microbes!

[Shallah Kali]

34. Would better meat slaughtering techniques as well as overuse of antibiotics reduce the spread

of potentially infectious c. diff. in food? Isn't clostridium difficile found in feces?

[bitchkitty]

36. Yuck.

I wonder if it's in eggs and cheese?