Corduroy Orange

Jesse–

Recently a chef tried telling me that Steak Tartare is perfectly safe to eat, that I shouldn’t worry about the possibility of E. coli contamination. He claimed that the spinach outbreak of 2006 was evidence that leafy greens are more dangerous than meats. That doesn’t seem quite right to me. What do you have to say on the subject?

–A reader in MA

Steak tartare is ground, raw beef. As it is served raw, it is no different than any other raw meat product and it carries with it the risk of bacterial infection. Specifically, as beef, it can be tainted with E. coli. E. coli is naturally present in a cattle’s digestive system and during the slaughtering process, the cattle’s intestines can be torn apart, resulting in the meat being splattered with fecal matter. While the beef is washed before it is further processed, packaged, and sold, some bacteria may remain on the surface, resulting in a surface contamination.

When somebody cooks a steak, any surface contamination of bacteria is killed quickly as the heat is applied to the outside of the meat; and therefore eating a steak rare or medium rare is generally safe, assuming that the meat was procured from an appropriately slaughtered, healthy animal and held according to best practices (at temperatures of 40 F or lower) for an appropriate time frame.

Grinding the meat complicates the picture, as the meat that was on the surface is mashed up with the meat that was in the interior; and the act of grinding creates a great deal more surface area for bacteria to grow on. Basically, any bacteria that was on the outside is mashed in with the meat from the inside, thereby giving the bacteria more food on which to thrive and grow. This is why many restaurants will ask you what temperature you want them to cook a steak to, but will cook a hamburger to well-done unless specifically requested not to.

Steak tartare is a fancy dish (even if it is just raw ground meat). It is generally ground from the better cuts of meat, and ground in the restaurant where it is served in small batches (as compared to being ground in 10,000+ pound batches at a meat processing plant in Chicago where the beef scraps of thousands of cattle are co-mingled in an industrial grinder). Processing the meat in small batches reduces the risk of bacterial infection because there is less meat; and if there is a problem with one piece of meat, the contamination will be limited to that batch. The restaurant may even trim the surface meat away and use it for other purposes so as to further reduce the risk.

But even if they adhere to all of those precautions, and grind it in a refrigerated room, there is still a greater chance of bacteria being carried from the surface of the meat to the interior and therefore transmitted to the dining public with raw beef than there is with cooked beef. The knife that cuts off the surface meat may carry bacteria into the meat that remains; then the bacteria may be ground up into the rest of the beef. Such an incident should be rare, and therefore if the beef has been properly handled, and is fresh, steak tartare can probably be eaten safely by most people who don’t have weakened immune systems.

But it is foolish to suggest that spinach is more dangerous than raw ground beef simply because the last outbreak came from spinach. In fact, according to the FDA report on the spinach outbreak, “Potential environmental risk factors for E.coli O157:H7 contamination at or near the field included the presence of wild pigs, the proximity of irrigation wells used to grow produce for ready-to-eat packaging, and surface waterways exposed to feces from cattle and wildlife”(http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01593.html). In short, beef sh_t in the irrigation water was likely to blame for the E. coli infection in the spinach.

If somebody enjoys steak tartare, they should continue to enjoy it, assuming that they trust the cleanliness of the restaurant preparing it. But no one should fool themselves into thinking that it is a risk-free delicacy. I myself have no interest in it—if I’m going to eat ground beef, I would like it to be cooked, please.

I hope this answers any questions you have about the topic, and that the somewhat graphic descriptions about the meat processing process don’t unnecessarily scare you away from beef. I would, however, encourage you to do some research into the feedlot system through which the overwhelming majority of our nation’s beef cattle are processed and learn more about where the beef comes from. Unfortunately, modern factory farming methods lead to most beef being pumped full of a list of hormones that would make the scientists at Balco blush; and the diet of corn and the confinement practices common at the feedlots require that the processors feed the cattle a steady diet of antibiotics in order to maintain the animals’ health until such time as they can be slaughtered.

As such, I would recommend against eating steak tartare unless you know for certain that the cattle was fed a diet of grass and allowed to graze at pasture until it was slaughtered. A cattle that led a healthy life is less likely to have suffered from illness than a cattle that was subjected to confinement, especially since the practice of confinement requires the cattle to basically stand around in their own filth, thereby increasing the possibility that fecal matter from outside of the cow will infect the beef at the time of slaughter.

I know I’m getting into more detail about more questions than you asked, but all of these issues are so interconnected that in order to paint a realistic picture for you of what the dangers are and where they come from, it’s somewhat necessary to give a broad outline of the system as a whole. If you are interested in finding grass-fed beef near where you live, contact your local agricultural extension service (generally run out of a state agricultural university, though they sometimes have satellite offices in cities; the UMASS extension service web page is here) and ask about local beef farmers. They should be able to put you in touch with several, and from there you can talk to the farmers and find out how they raise their beef.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Advice Column, Sustainable Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.