Fighting Deadly Bugs Keep Kitchen Safe From Food-Borne Illness

Two years ago, I heard a speech by Nancy Donley, a young Chicago mother whose 6-year-old son, Alex, died after eating E. coli-tainted hamburger. She’s president of a group called STOP (Safe Tables Our Priority), which works for tougher food-safety standards.

She showed us Alex’s photo and told us how she, her husband and their doctor watched helplessly as he suffered an excruciating death. The bacteria destroyed his organs and liquefied portions of his brain, she said, and there was nothing they could do.

By the end of her speech, most of us were in tears. And everyone, I suspect, was thinking: There but for the grace of God go I.

And you.

Ever since, I’ve thought of Donley when a food-borne illness strikes out of nowhere and puts us on a firstname basis with another deadly bug: salmonella, E. coli, hepatitis. And, now, listeria.

Millions of pounds of hot dogs, cold cuts and other meats made at Bil Mar Foods in Zeeland, Mich., have been recalled because some was contaminated by a bacterium called Listeria monocytogenes. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the contaminated products caused 12 deaths, three miscarriages and more than 70 illnesses nationwide.

Possible listeria contamination has also caused the recall of thousands of pounds of hot dogs and lunch meats made by other companies including Oscar Mayer, Thorn Apple Valley in Arkansas and B.B. Meat & Sausage Co. of Bellingham.

While listeria causes flu-like symptoms in most healthy people, the bacteria kills more than 20 percent of those it strikes - primarily pregnant women and fetuses, the elderly, and those with a compromised immune system. That compares to a death rate of less than 3 percent among those who get food poisoning from salmonella and E. coli.

As tragic as it is, most of us don’t panic at news like this. We check the fridge and freezer to be sure we don’t have any of the products. Then we try to put it into perspective.

Partly, it’s because we hate worrying about food. We don’t want to live in fear of bologna. We don’t want to carry a thermometer to stick into every hamburger we order.

But we also tune it out because we don’t know what to do about it. Here’s where to start:

Cook all meats to safe internal temperatures or until thoroughly done. If you haven’t bought an instant-read meat thermometer, make the investment. They typically cost less than $15, and they work with thin cuts of meat. Most of them come with a list of safe cooking temperatures.

Wash all produce. Listeria and many other bacteria can thrive on raw fruits and vegetables. Scrub firm ones. Soft ones such as strawberries or lettuce should be washed well in cold running water. Wash the outside of melons before cutting.

Avoid unpasteurized milk and products made from it.

Keep uncooked meats and their juices away from everything else. Don’t put the cooked steaks back on the same platter that held the raw ones. Don’t chop cabbage on the cutting board where you just sliced the chicken.

Wash hands, knives and cutting boards after handling uncooked foods. A teaspoon of household bleach in a gallon of water makes a good disinfectant.

If you’re one of the millions of people at higher risk of infection from listeria and other food-borne pathogens, you need to take extra steps, says the CDC.

Pregnant women and elderly people, as well as people with diabetes, kidney disease, cancer, AIDS or other conditions that weaken the immune system, also should heat to steaming all leftovers and ready-to-eat foods, such as hot dogs, even though they’re fully cooked. That’s because listeria, unlike most other food-borne bugs, can multiply in refrigerated conditions.

We can’t panic over every food recall. But we can remember Nancy Donley’s little boy and do the prudent thing.