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Meat, antibiotics, and bacteria
Name: Amber.
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
I would like to do my science project on antibiotics and bacteria.
First I would like to know if they feed high doses of antibiotics to cattle
before they were taken to the meat factory. I was told that they may have done
this back in the 50's. The idea was to keep the cattle healthy as well as the
people that ate the meat. Second, what are the names of the most common bacteria
that cause illness in humans? I would like to test the effects of cooking meat
that have antibiotics in their tissues. By extracting the juices from the meat
and exposing it to bacteria cultures this will determine the proper temperature
to cook meat not to destroy the antibiotics. What do you think? Would this be a
good science project? Thank you in advance for any information that you send.
Replies:
Interesting. First, the use of antibiotics and hormones on livestock is
frowned upon (don't quite know if there are actually laws against it, but I would
think there would be..) Drugs and foreign compounds introduced into the animals
have the desired effect, of course -- the meat is relatively free of bacteria,
the meat may be leaner as a result of hormone treatments or the milk may have a
higher protein content, or whatever, but they also often have undesirable side-effects
in humans who actually consume them. So I would frown upon trying to use
heat-denaturation experiments unless you're ready to ensconce yourself in a research
project spanning several years, as you first have to find meat that has been treated
in this way -- waste of time if you try to do something like an Ames test with meat
extract from a drug-free cow. But to address the rest of your question, I might suggest
trying this instead: test to see if you can find the necessary minimum cooking temp to
kill existing bacteria -- sort of like restaurant inspectors do. This would be much
easier, and you don't have to worry about getting "negative meat." Do a control by
culturing a sample of uncooked meat for bacteria, and then cook the same type of meat
(from the same source, if possible) at different temperatures and culture them for
bacteria.
As for the types of bacteria which can cause illness, I assume you mean food-borne
pathogens -- there are literally zillions of different bacteria, listed:
Okay, bacteria... ummm, well, the disease botulism is caused by Clostridium
botulinum, a common bacteria found in the soil which can grow in canned foods,
particularly, if the canning process is not correctly done. Salmonella is a more
common and less serious affliction caused by several varieties of the Salmonella
bacterium, found in all egg-containing products -- thus anything with eggs in it
should be cooked thoroughly and refrigerated well at all times, or (as my ecology
teacher from high school once told me) you'll be doing the "bivvy in the privy" for
a lengthy time. Hepatitis A can be found sometimes in prepared foods, if the person
who prepared the food is infected and didn't wash his or her hands well beforehand.
Of course, there was a big outbreak on the West coast of Escherechia coli (a variety
which inhabits cows, not man), and that is also something which must be guarded
against. As previously noted, the best way to guard against problems with bacteria
in food is to cook your food thoroughly and place them in containers appropriate for
their storage, refrigerating or preserving the food properly and disposing of it when
necessary. That enough?
--WORDSWORTH
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Update: June 2012
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