Source:  Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE.COM, 4/27/10

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is urging USDA to deem an additional six strains of E. coli as adulterants for which the agency must test in beef products, contending they are as hazardous as E. coli O157:H7.

In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Gillibrand asked that USDA also list non-O157 Shiga Toxin-producing Serotypes of Escherichia coli (non-O157 STECs) as adulterants, recognizing the "scientific and legal bases" for doing so as detailed in two petitions to the agency's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

A group called Safe Tables Our Priority (STOP) is leading the petition campaign.

"Such listings will avoid the same kind of large-scale disaster that precipitated the 1994 declaration of E. coli O157:H7 as an adulterant," the senator wrote in the letter. "S.T.O.P.'s petition also calls for the expansion of the definition of adulterant to include E. coli O157:H7 and these six other STEC when they are in any type of beef, not just ground beef or beef intended for ground beef."

Gillibrand contended in a news release that non-O157 STECs "are just as hazardous as E. coli (O157:H7)." She noted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that these other strands cause 36,700 illnesses, 1,100 hospitalizations and 30 deaths in the United States every year.

Last fall, Gillibrand proposed the E. coli Eradication Act, which would require all meat plants to test beef before and after it is ground. 

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