More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for Clostridium difficile (C. diff), a bacteria that can cause intestinal distress and, very rarely, death. About 40 percent of the cooked products and nearly 48 percent of the ready-to-eat products showed evidence of C. diff. Nearly 30 percent of the tainted samples of ground beef, pork and turkey and ready-to-eat meats were identical or closely related to a super-toxic strain of C. diff that's a growing problem in hospitals across the country.
But there are no proven cases of humans getting C. diff from food; it's almost always hospital transmitted. And if food-person transmission is possible, it's not known if the levels of bacteria in the supermarket meat are high enough to cause infection. But it does seem to add to the growing evidence that overuse of antibiotics, both at home and in meat processing plants, are leading to nasty superbugs. Yet another reason to eat sustainably-raised hormone and antibiotic-free meat.
11-19-2008 @4:09PM Joey said... Both articles are worthless without detailing which stores were included.
Then, at least, we could go from EVERYBODY PANIC!!! to those of you that bought meat from XYZ panic!
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11-19-2008 @7:06PM Amber said... Call me silly or ignorant, but how would hormone and antibiotic-free meat not contain C. diff? Hormones and antibiotics do not cause C.diff, nor is the limited use of necessary antibiotics such a horrific thing. If my parents weren't able to use antibiotics on their buffalo herd, which roam hundreds of acres of land and are treated extremely well, it would have been decimated by anthrax. And once anthrax is found in a herd, you have to vaccinate for it every year, unless you are all-knowing and can see into the future that it will never return. Fear mongering and panic inducing posts like these really irk me.
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11-20-2008 @1:40AM badfrog said... No! I WANT antibiotics! Kill C. Differens! I don't wanna die! Natural foods make you slow and stupid and they taste like cabbage.
I don't care if there's chemicals in it, as long as my lettuce is crisp.
--G. Slick
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11-20-2008 @4:07PM Gil said... Joey is right. Here I am thinking, "What stores? Where in AZ?" Useless.
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11-20-2008 @4:37PM JustaTech said... When humans get C. diff it is usually a side effect of powerful antibiotics. The antibiotics kill the friendly bacteria in your gut, so C. diff moves in. It is very hard to treat with antibiotics (since that's what started the problem in the first place), so in some cases the patient needs a fecal transplant from a relative. And yes, it is just as disgusting as it sounds.
Amber- you've given a perfect example of the correct use of antibiotics: to treat a current infection. That's how they should be used in everything, including people. Kudos to your parents!
Based on that, if your cattle are on antibiotics as a preventative measure because of housing problems, then I would think that you would be more likely to see C. diff in the cattle. How it gets from inside the cow's gut to on the meat, well, that's a separate problem.
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