Tainted meats point to superbug C. diff in food: Study finds gut germ in 40 percent of grocery meats [View All]

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Source: MSNBC

A potentially deadly intestinal germ increasingly found in hospitals is also showing up in a more unsavory setting: grocery store meats.

More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for Clostridium difficile, a gut bug known as 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.

“These data suggest that domestic animals, by way of retail meats, may be a source of C. difficile for human infection,” said J. Glenn Songer, a professor of veterinary science at the Tucson school, who talked with msnbc.com about work now under review by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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C. diff is a tricky bug, hard to kill with anything but bleach in the hospital and able to survive most cooking techniques in the kitchen. And, unlike scary infections like E. coli 0157:H7, which has transmitted illness through foods from ground beef to fresh spinach, C. diff can't be traced quickly to its source.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27774614/