Consumer Reports has issued its research findings into the ground turkey sold in grocery stores all across the country, under any number of labels, and revealed that most of the ground turkey it found was contaminated with stuff that can make people ill.
Ground Turkey Sold in Stores Likely Filled With Bacteria and Disease-Causing Organisms
It’s causing a big national news alert today, where the Consumer Reports findings are being shared with the public as a warning against considering ground turkey safe to eat. Not only did the 257 samples tested by Consumer Reports have OVER 50% CONTAINING FECAL BACTERIA (and yes, that is what you think it is) but OVER 90% HAD DISEASE-CAUSING ORGANISMS in it.
From their news release:
- Overall, 90 percent of the samples had one or more of the five bacteria for which they were tested.
- Bacteria on ground turkey products labeled “no antibiotics,” “organic,” or “raised without antibiotics” were resistant to fewer antibiotics overall than bacteria found on conventional products.
- Bacteria related to fecal contamination were found on the majority of samples. Sixty-nine percent of ground-turkey samples harbored enterococcus, and 60 percent E. coli.
- Three samples were contaminated with methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
- Salmonella, which is one of the top causes of foodborne illness, was found in 12 of the samples tested (5 percent) and two-thirds of them were multidrug resistant; government studies typically find higher rates of salmonella, at around 12 percent. Processing plants are permitted by the government to have product contamination rates as high as 49.9 percent.
- Consumer Reports also found much more resistance to classes of antibiotics approved for use in healthy turkeys to promote growth and prevent disease than for those not approved for such uses.
You can read the details of this Ground Turkey Report online at the Consumer Reports web site or get the details in the June issue of Consumer Reports magazine.
Image: CDC photo of E Coli bacteria – found on 60% of the Ground Turkey tested by Consumer Reports
What is going on here? According to Consumer Reports’ scientists, this is just the tip of the iceberg in a food industry problem regarding feeding antibiotics to poultry and farm animals destined for human consumption:
“Our findings strongly suggest that there is a direct relationship between the routine use of antibiotics in animal production and increased antibiotic resistance in bacteria on ground turkey. It’s very concerning that antibiotics fed to turkeys are creating resistance to antibiotics used in human medicine,” said Dr. Urvashi Rangan, Director of the Food Safety and Sustainability Group at Consumer Reports. “Humans don’t consume antibiotics every day to prevent disease and neither should healthy animals. Prudent use of antibiotics should be required to stem the public health crisis generated from the reduced effectiveness of antibiotics.”
If you or a loved one may have suffered food poisoning from ground turkey, then get medical attention of course and remember to save invoices, wrappings, and other documents that may serve as evidence in any claims you may assert in the future for personal injury damages due to contaminated and dangerous ground turkey.
