Protect Yourself from Bacteria in Meat and Keep Your Cookout Safe
Foodborne illness has gotten a lot of bad press lately — well deserved, especially with the tragic outbreaks of E. coli in Germany. But danger lurks much closer to home, as well, and as summer cookout season peaks, food safety deserves especially close attention.
According to New York Times food writer Mark Bittman, “One in 6 Americans gets sick from food we eat every year — that’s about 48 million people, or enough to fill your average baseball stadium a thousand times with people having extremely unpleasant symptoms — and there are 3,000 food-related deaths annually.”
Meanwhile, Glamour magazine just printed a very unsavory tidbit in its Weird Health News section about shockingly high levels of bacteria in meats especially in the U.S.
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A new report shines a light on a dirty little truth about the bacteria in meat at your local grocery store: It’s swimming in bacteria, say experts…
[According to] the nonprofit biomedical research group, the Translational Genomics Research Institute, which reviewed 136 meat samples from 26 grocery stores in Illinois, Florida, California, Arizona, and Washington, D.C., . . . [M]ost meat found in grocery stores contains high levels of bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant varieties . . .
The study estimates that almost half of the meat and poultry sold in U.S. supermarkets and grocery stores contains potentially harmful bacteria. What’s more, half of the contaminated samples contained strains of bacteria that were resistant to at least 3 antibiotics, including penicillin and tetracycline. Some strains were resistant to 6 or more antibiotics.
With barbecue season ushering in its traditional outbreaks of E. coli and salmonella, we need to exercise more caution than usual.
One step you can take to protect yourself and your family from foodborne illness is to use a carefully diluted solution of 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to kill harmful food contaminants. Diluted H2O2 can be used on all food preparation surfaces and tools such as cutting boards and knives, as well as on food itself.
According to James Paul Roguski’s report, The Truth About Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide, food grade H2O2 at a dilution of .5% to 1.% can be used to marinade and effectively sanitize meats.
Roguski says, “Place fish, chicken, beef, pork or other meat in a non-metallic casserole dish, and soak in a 50/50 mix of distilled water and 3% food grade hydrogen peroxide.”
Roguski references a 1987 issue of Poultry Science that reported, “Hydrogen peroxide has been used successfully to decontaminate broiler chickens by soaking them for ten minutes in 0.5% -1.0% concentration of food grade hydrogen peroxide.”
You can also use highly diluted food grade H2O2 internally to treat any unfortunate case of foodborne illness that might occur. For any internal use, most sources recommend starting with a dilution of 3 drops of 35% H2O2 in 8 oz of distilled water, taken 3 times daily.
However, in all cases, using 35% food grade H2O2 requires accurate instruction and extreme care. At a 35% concentration, H2O2 can be extremely dangerous or even fatal. Specific dilution techniques for internal use can be found online and in The One-Minute Cure.