I’m not sure which hol­i­day is the biggest one for eat­ing meat in the US, but my guess is that Inde­pen­dence Day ranks near the top. So with July 4th falling dur­ing this week, I was not sur­prised to see scary head­lines about the dan­gers of eat­ing con­ven­tion­al­ly pro­duced meat. I’m pret­ty skep­ti­cal about this type of sea­son­al food hys­te­ria, like the spring­time warn­ings about “dirty” fruits and veg­eta­bles – read my Pro­duce Busi­ness arti­cle here – so my anten­nae went up when a head­line about “super­bugs” in super­mar­ket meat caught my eye. The arti­cle sug­gest­ed avoid­ing con­ven­tion­al­ly raised meat and instead buy­ing meat labeled “organ­ic,” “grass­fed,” or “no antibi­ot­ic residues.” I wasn’t con­vinced that the advice was cor­rect and based on sci­ence.

Then, a close friend con­tract­ed a par­tic­u­lar­ly vir­u­lent case of E.coli from eat­ing a restau­rant meal, and that made the top­ic of food safe­ty even more real for me. So I decid­ed to dig my jour­nal­ist fork into ques­tions regard­ing the safe­ty of con­ven­tion­al ver­sus organ­ic meat, and here is what I learned.

Does all meat have poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous bac­te­ria?

Yes. The most com­mon path­o­gen­ic bac­te­ria in meat and poul­try, name­ly Sal­mo­nel­la, Campy­lobac­ter, E. coli and Ente­ro­coc­cus, are present in the intesti­nal tract of feed ani­mals and are present in both con­ven­tion­al and organ­ic retail meat. Organ­ic is just as like­ly as con­ven­tion­al to car­ry bac­te­ria. In fact, stud­ies com­par­ing grass-fed to con­ven­tion­al­ly raised retail beef prod­ucts and con­ven­tion­al to antibi­ot­ic-free and organ­ic chick­en breasts sold at retail find no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in bac­te­ria counts.

Here is some good news: bac­te­r­i­al counts are declin­ing or steady in retail chick­en, pork chops, ground turkey and ground meat, accord­ing to the 2015 Nation­al Antimi­cro­bial Resis­tance Mon­i­tor­ing Sys­tem (NARMS) report, a col­lab­o­ra­tion among the US Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA), US Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA), Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC), and local and state health depart­ments. NARMS tracks changes in the antimi­cro­bial sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty of enteric (intesti­nal) bac­te­ria found in ill peo­ple (CDC), retail meats (FDA), and food ani­mals (USDA) in the Unit­ed States. The NARMS pro­gram pro­vides infor­ma­tion about emerg­ing bac­te­r­i­al resis­tance, how resis­tant infec­tions dif­fer from sus­cep­ti­ble infec­tions, and the impact of inter­ven­tions designed to lim­it the spread of resis­tance. NARMS data are used by FDA to make reg­u­la­to­ry deci­sions designed to pre­serve the effec­tive­ness of antibi­otics for humans and ani­mals. NARMS reports show that the most con­cern­ing bac­te­ria have declined steadi­ly for more than a decade.

What’s the deal with antibi­ot­ic resis­tant bac­te­ria?

Some of the poten­tial­ly harm­ful bac­te­ria in meat and poul­try have evolved to resist cer­tain antibi­otics that are used to treat con­ven­tion­al­ly raised farm ani­mals. A human infec­tion caused by an antibi­ot­ic-resis­tant strain may be hard­er to treat, depend­ing on which antibi­otics the strain responds to. Meat is not the only poten­tial source of antibi­ot­ic-resis­tant bac­te­r­i­al strains. They can come from oth­er foods and also can devel­op in humans who have been treat­ed with antibi­otics. Also, by nature, many bac­te­ria are resis­tant to at least one antibi­ot­ic, but can eas­i­ly be treat­ed with oth­er antibi­otics.

I turned to my col­leagues at the North Amer­i­can Meat Insti­tute (NAMI), the old­est and largest trade asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing U.S. pack­ers and proces­sors of beef, pork, lamb, veal and turkey, for addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion. (Dis­clo­sure: I have attend­ed pro­grams spon­sored by NAMI) NAMI offers a series of answers to com­mon myths about meat, includ­ing answers regard­ing super­bugs, that is, bac­te­ria resis­tant to all bac­te­ria. NAMI points out that the objec­tive of meat and poul­try proces­sors is to elim­i­nate path­o­gen­ic bac­te­ria on prod­ucts before they are con­sumed. Reports show that resis­tance to impor­tant antibi­otics used in human med­i­cine remains low.

Do con­ven­tion­al meat and poul­try con­tain antibi­otics?

In 2017, the FDA imple­ment­ed new rec­om­men­da­tions to lim­it use of antibi­otics in feed ani­mals to those nec­es­sary for ani­mal health and over­seen by a vet­eri­nar­i­an. Antimi­cro­bials no longer are per­mit­ted for growth pro­mo­tion and improved feed effi­cien­cy. I learned from the Nation­al Pork Board that pig farm­ers and oth­er live­stock farm­ers fol­low the FDA reg­u­la­tions, includ­ing with­draw­al times, to ensure that retail meat has no antibi­ot­ic residues. This will reduce the preva­lence over time of ani­mals in the food sup­ply har­bor­ing antibi­ot­ic-resis­tant bac­te­ria.

What is the bot­tom line?

NAMI reas­sures con­sumers that they should feel con­fi­dent about the meat and poul­try they eat, which are safer than ever. The choice of con­ven­tion­al or organ­ic is up to you. BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, you can reduce the risk of con­tract­ing a food­borne ill­ness from meat or poul­try, con­ven­tion­al or organ­ic, and from bac­te­ria, antibi­ot­ic-resis­tant or not, through prop­er food han­dling. Charts from the CDC, includ­ing the grilled chart below, sum­ma­rize key mea­sures: sep­a­rate raw meat and poul­try from oth­er items in the gro­cery cart and refrig­er­a­tor, keep cool at tem­per­a­tures below 40°F until ready to cook, clean hands, work sur­faces and uten­sils, and cook to the prop­er tem­per­a­ture. Cook­ing to an inter­nal tem­per­a­ture of at least 140°F kills all types of bac­te­ria.

CDC Grill Safe­ty chart