40 Percent of Grocery Store Meat Sampled has Superbug Clostridium difficile (C. diff)
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A potentially deadly intestinal germ increasingly found n hospitals is also showing up in a more unsavory setting: grocery store meats. According to press reports this morning, an Arizona researcher found that a shocking forty percent of tested meat products were contaminated with Clostridium difficile, a bacteria normally associated with severe hospital infections. The test was conducted on meat from three national chain stores. Federal health officials, however, say more study is needed to determine whether C. diff is transmitted through food.
More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for 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.
