Cold cuts last about a week
In theory the CDC recommendation might be a useful educational point, but Barbara Resnick, incoming president of the American Geriatrics Society and a professor of nursing at the University of Maryland, knows of no one over that age who heats deli meats to that level and says she’s never seen a case of listeriosis in a patient. Cold cuts last about a week,
“Older adults eat lunch meat all the time, because it’s convenient,” says the author of Essentials of Clinical Geriatrics. “My own concern would be the quality-of-life issue. Do you want people to worry and not eat something they really enjoy?”
To her mind, deli meats’ sodium content is the bigger risk.
“I have patients that are 103, and they’re probably eating lunch meat every day. But they’re survivors — lunch meat’s not going to get them,” she says.
But food-safety officials mean business about the warning. “When it comes to food safety, we’re serious: People at risk for listeriosis should not eat hot dogs, luncheon meats or deli meats unless they are reheated until steaming hot. Thoroughly reheating food can help kill any bacteria that might be present. If you cannot reheat these foods, do not eat them,” says Neil Gaffney, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service.
The recommendation is because of a food-borne bug by the name of listeria monocytogenes which causes an uncommon but potentially fatal disease called listeriosis. About 85% of cases are linked to cold cuts or deli meats, says Mike Doyle, a professor of food microbiology at the University of Georgia.
And based on FSIS risk-assessment data, meats sliced at the store pose a greater risk than meats pre-sliced at federally inspected establishments, Gaffney says.
The threat from listeria is real and not to be ignored, CDC and USDA emphasize.
“About one of five patients with listeriosis dies,” says Benjamin Silk, with CDC’s Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch. That’s why CDC is concerned about it, although the numbers that fall ill are still relatively low. The CDC estimates there are about 1,600 cases of listeriosis and 260 related deaths each year, only half of which are diagnosed and reported — so people are getting sick, but may not know what sickened them.
It’s not just the CDC raising the concern. listeriosis and cold cuts were ranked just last week as the third worst combination of a food and a pathogen in terms of the burden they place on public health, costing $1.1 billion a year in medical costs and lost work days, according to a study by the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogen Institute.
Pregnant women are one of the highest risk groups. About one in six cases of listeriosis occurs in pregnancy and when a pregnant woman gets it, there’s a 30% chance of a miscarriage, studies show.
Even the American Meat Institute, a meat industry group, says heating meat to 165 degrees is a good idea for at-risk individuals. On a video on meat safety in pregnancy, former AMI Foundation President Randy Huffman tells viewers that both the elderly and especially pregnant women can “enjoy a steaming hot ham, turkey or roast beef sandwich. They will taste great and add an extra food-safety margin that you need.”
Listeria is a problem because of its unique ability to keep growing even when refrigerated. Lunch meats are cooked at food-processing plants, and the bacteria in them is killed when they’re prepared and packaged, says Jeff Sindelar, a professor of meat science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The problem with cold cuts and lunch meats is that once they’re sliced, or the package is opened, if even a single cell of listeria from a contaminated surface, a meat slicer or even the air gets on them, it can continue to grow in the refrigerator.
“And you can’t see, taste or smell that it’s there,” adds Douglas Powell a professor of food safety at Kansas State University.
One point the meat industry makes is that the CDC is necessarily hyper conservative because its mission is to protect the public health. But, says Wisconsin’s Sindelar, the industry has made great strides in decreasing the risk over the past 10 years.
Today almost all packaged lunch meats now contain either added sodium lactate, an acid formed by fermentation, or potassium lactate, fermented from sugar, as antimicrobials, says Doyle. That’s what he looks for when he buys cold cuts.
“If you want to throw a little science into it — look for an antimicrobial on the package; then the risk goes way down,” Sindelar says.
In addition, many companies also use high-pressure treatments to kill bacteria in meat, or submerse the finished product briefly in 180-degree water to kill possible listeria on their surface.
Finally, CDC also says don’t keep opened packages of lunch meat, or meat sliced at the local deli, for longer than three to five days. That’s another one no one pays attention to, says Kansas’ Powell. Cold cuts last about a week,
“Anecdotally, lots of people keep cold cuts in their refrigerator far longer than they should,” he says. “People keep them for one to two weeks. That’s the key message. If you get it from the deli counter, four days max.”
Source: tucsoncitizen
