Chet: >> I believe E.coli does not limit itself to living in ground >> meat, though the Hudson recall did focus on that variety of flesh. >> Are you suggesting E.coli only exists in ground flesh? JL: >I am not. I was just saying that the recent victims of E. Coli were from >Hudson's gound meat. Of course, the bacteria live also in other kinds of meat. My understanding is that e coli (like most other bacteria) breed on the surfaces of meat. Thus ground meat (hamburger) increases the surface area to include the interior as well (since hamburger is really a bunch of tiny brokens "strings" of meat all messed around). The reason cooked steaks (even very rare) are not as problematic as regards e.coli is that the surface bacteria are killed by heat and there are no e.coli in the interior of an intact steak. One the other hand if one were to eat rare hamburger, the e.coli residing in the interior of the hamburger may not be killed by heat. As far as raw meat goes, it _seems_ that surface bacteria populations are significantly decreased as the meat surface dries out since off-flavors disappear as the outside dries. Probably many bacterial strains need moisture to increase their population. None of which makes the aged raw meat bacteria-free of course. ;) JL: >I even heard on TV the case of someone who got contaminated by drinking some >unpasteurized fruit juice (if my memory serves me well). And lets not forget botulism (most common in improperly sterilized canned foods), one of the most potent natural toxins known. ;) Truth told, I'm more grossed out watching a toddler eat Cheezitos than the idea of farm animals eating fish meal and garbage. The whole idea of keeping farm animals is to feed them foods which are inedible to humans, letting them convert it into high-quality fats and protiens. Cattle (ideally) eat grasses which are not digestible by humans. Pigs thrive on the chaff of human foods and can forage their own from pasture. Too bad that idea is perverted into feeds like sawdust, cement, and worse... Hopefully articles like the one Chet shared will make people more willing to pay more for meat from properly fed animals--as opposed to turning them off of meat altogether which would be tragic IMO. Unfortunately, such articles often have a vegetarian bias and are more interested in promoting meat abstenence than a revamp of the cattle industry... Cheers. Kirt Cheers, Kirt