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Cold Pasteurization Kills E.coli in Hamburger

© Neal Rolfe Chamberlain

Most of us are familiar with pasteurization. Nearly everyone that drinks milk has pasteurized milk in their refrigerator. The process of pasteurization uses heat to kill the organisms in the milk that can make us sick. It has been used for many different beverages.

Unfortunately, heat pasteurization is not practical for solid foods like hamburger. Most of us would rather cook the meat ourselves to get that freshly cooked taste. The major problem with ground meats like hamburger is that disease-causing bacteria get mixed throughout the meat when it is ground up. To kill all the disease-causing bacteria (ex. E. coli O157:H7) the entire hamburger must be thoroughly cooked.

Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Iowa State University and Natick Army Laboratory have discovered a way to kill all the disease-causing bacteria without cooking the hamburger. They use an accelerator that produces electrons and shoots them at the meat. When the electrons hit the bacteria they destroy their DNA and kill the bacteria. The electrons do NOT cause significant changes in the meat. This process is better than using radioactive compounds since no radioactive compounds are used in this process. When the workday is done you simply turn off the machine and the electrons stop being produced by the machine.

Two different food processors are considering using this cold pasteurization to treat their hamburgers. To get more information on this neat new process go to the Newswise article.

Take Care and Think Microbiologically!

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