Aust. beef suspected salmonella cause

Press, 30 August 1977, Page 25

Aust. beef suspected salmonella cause

NZPA New York Beef imported from Australia was strongly suspected of playing a very important role in outbreaks of a variety of salmonella in four northeastern states of the United States, a spokesman for a study group from the American Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, said. Dr Eugene Gangarosa said that cattle presumably picked up the salmonells organisms from eating contaminated food on Australian properties. Also, steps in the processing of the meat presumably allowed salmonella to multiply and spread in bigger doses when the carcases were cut up and distributed to many places in the United States.

Dr Gangarosa said that there had been a striking increase in human infections from salmonella bovis morbificans. This had been a rarely reported variety of salmonella in the United States. But was the second most common type of salmonella infection among Australians.

Dr Gangarosa made his comments while giving details on outbreaks of salmonellosis food poisoning in the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania that have been linked to consumption of pre-cooked roasts of beef. Officials of the centre for disease control said that the contaminated meat was also believed to represent a significant public health problem around the United States and in Canada.

Although epidemiologists at the centre said they did not know precisely how many Americans had become infected from the contaminated

meat product, one official estimated that the number was in the thousands and perhaps the tens of thousands. Some of the victims have required hospital treatment but no deaths have been attributed to the outbreak. Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture has begun a recall of precooked roasts of beef from hundreds of outlets served by three distributors in Philadelphia, Jersey City and Readville, Massachusetts, after salmonella were cultured from samples of their products. Also, the department is expected to recommend within a few days that at the food-processing plants the heating temperature reach 63 degrees centigrade in ail parts of each pre-cooked roast beef. The one way to assure the death of salmonella bacteria in roast beef was for the person cooking it to make sure with a meat thermometer that the temperature did reach 63 degrees, the department said. The Atlanta centre said in a report that precooked roasts of beef had been linked to outbreaks of salmonellosis in this country for each of the last three years. The current problem was first recognised in late June when two outbreaks occurred in Erie and Cortland counties in up-state New York. Salmonellosis is caused by the salmonella bacterium, of which there are about 1500 types that can be identified in the laboratory. There is no apparent difference in the seiousness of the various types. In the New York outbreaks. health officials identified salmonella newport both in patients who

had eaten pre-cooked roasts of beef served in delicatessens, and in the meat.

Agriculture officials said they had begun recalling the product sold by the Holiday Provision Company of Philadelphia, which supplied the precooked roast beefs that were implicated in the outbreaks in New York and later in those in New Jersey and Connecticut. Those outbreaks from a commercially prepared product led officials of the Atlanta centre to review the national salmonella reporting pattern. Epidemiologists noted that four states had marked increases in salmonella newport since June. A collaborative study by the health departments of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut has identified at least seven other distributors who unwittingly sold contaminated meat. An Agriculture Department spokesman said that recalls were being made by Thumann Incorporated in Jersey City, and Stop and Shop in Readville, Massachusetts. Apparently no action was taken against the other five unidentified distributors.