> On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 08:35:01PM -0500, Paleo Phil
> [[log in to unmask]] wrote (in part):
> | I don't intentionally eat ground meats raw because I don't know
> | how many animals were ground together. The more animals, the
> | higher risk of bacterial contamination.
> 
> tiny quibble (microbiologically speaking) :)
> 
> Actually, the main concern with ground foods is that even with
> properly clean blades which grind the food, there is significant
> increases the surface area of food exposed to air. The blades
> mechanically cause the entire sample of meat to be 'seeded' with
> any bacteria present as the blades pulverize the food. 

Good point. I forgot about that. 

Widespread outbreaks of food poisoning from meats are usually traced to huge
slaughterhouses for obvious reasons, but I don't know whether the overall
rates of contamination actually increased with the advent of the factory
slaughterhouses or not.

> This in
> itself is not the problem. The issue becomes consumption of this
> meat after hours of storage.

I agree. I like to freak out processed-food eaters by eating fresh raw steak
or eggs now and then. I think the risk of bacterial overload with fresh,
high-quality meats is overblown. French people have been eating raw chopped
beef/horse meat mixed with raw eggs (steak tartare) for a long time without
major complaints, right? Granted, they do chop their meat fresh when they
make it. And come to think of it, the Tartars (Central and West Asian
pastoralists) ate it for a long time before passing it on to the French.
Some people make it with wine or lemon/lime juice, which allegedly kills
some of the bacteria (and the acid of the citrus reportedly partially cooks
the meat). 

One thing I discovered is that raw eggs go down easiest when drank whole, a
la Rocky Balboa. No matter how much you stir or blend them there always
seems to be some gooey, stringy bits, but if you leave them whole you don't
get that. I owe a debt of thanks to whoever recommended that in a past post
here. I think the justification given was that the unstirred eggs somehow
maintained more of their nutrition.
 
> Compare both plates after 37 degree centigrade incubation. You
> will generally find quite a profusion of mixed bacteria on the
> ground meat plate. The meat core one innoculated plate will be
> much cleaner.

Wow! Good data, thanks.