By Kristen Tribe

"If we want to stay in business as a cattle-producing nation, we need to make sure that we’re producing a product that the customer is confident in," says Dr. Dan Hale, professor and Extension meat specialist, Texas A&M University. "Everyone from the cattle producer to the meat processor needs to be willing to put their name on it to say that they’re proud of their product."

No one can deny that the beef industry has hit a few bumps along the way in the quest for beef safety, but research dollars and a renewed industry focus have put a beef product before the American public that is safer than ever before. And according to the most recent consumer surveys, the hard work is paying off.

Rick McCarty, executive director of issues management, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, says it is important to regularly take the consumers’ pulse on food safety concerns. To that end, NCBA conducts a quarterly, checkoff-funded "safety report card" survey to determine how consumers feel about the safety of beef in comparison to other food products.

The most recent survey was in November and he says beef ranked high. He noted that "beef" is usually split into two categories for these surveys – ground beef versus steaks and roasts because consumers view them differently.

Consumers were asked to give a letter grade, A, B, C or D, to different kinds of foods on how safe they are to eat. McCarty says obviously fruits and vegetables came in on top with 88 percent of the participants giving them an A or B, but 80 percent of participants gave steaks and roasts an A or B for being safe, which put them into third place. They ranked higher than pork chops, chicken, fish, ground beef and ground pork.

Survey respondents were then given a list of six types of food and asked which one they were most concerned about from a safety standpoint. Fish and seafood came in first with 26 percent listing it as their No. 1 concern. Second was chicken, followed by pre-prepared foods in third. Only 14 percent of consumers surveyed listed beef as their No. 1 concern. For this particular question, all beef products were in the same category. Rounding out the bottom of the survey were pork and fruits and vegetables.

McCarty says they also have seen a significant decrease in consumers’ worry about "mad cow" disease, and he feels like this is due in large part to the number of positive stories out there and the constant, tireless effort to promote precautions the United States has taken to prevent such an outbreak.

"We view consumers’ confidence in safety of the product as a foundation for everything else. If the consumer doesn’t think the product is safe, that diminishes the effectiveness of our marketing, public relations and product promotions programs, so we obviously have to work pretty hard in order to make sure that the climate for these other programs is a good one," he explains.

He says when they find areas of concern, it gives NCBA some strategic direction for public relations and working to improve the consumers’ confidence in beef. They hope that by informing the consumer of the newest work in the food safety field and the precautions that are taken, it will give them confidence in the product.

Dr. Bo Reagan, executive director of research and technology, says NCBA has always focused energy on safety, but its research efforts became more focused following the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak on the West Coast in 1993, which resulted in many illnesses and even some deaths.

Since that time, NCBA has spent more than $10 million checkoff dollars in the arena of food safety research, and more than 80 percent of the research projects funded by checkoff dollars have led to direct implementations of procedures that have improved beef safety.

Most of NCBA’s research money has been invested at the slaughter level instead of preharvest. Although they’ve been criticized for this practice, Reagan explains that NCBA must spend each dollar where it can have the most impact. He says the packers are a "pinch point" because there are five packers that process 75 percent to 80 percent of all cattle in this nation.

Some of the procedures NCBA has helped put in place include:

• Organic acid rinses – Natural food acids are applied after the final trim wash to remove pathogenic organisms.
   
• Steam vacuuming – This process is being used in virtually every major packing plant in the country. It is used to remove visible contamination and pathogens from the carcass.
   
• Hot water pasteurization – Water at a temperature of 180 degrees Fahrenheit or greater is used to wash carcasses. This is often followed with a cold water rinse to assure the best color and quality.
   
• Irradiation – Sometimes referred to as cold pasteurization, electrons from gamma rays or x-rays are scanned across a product and if it hits any pathogens, it breaks the DNA chain, preventing it from reproducing. The process was approved for use on meat by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1997.

Reagan says one of the biggest strategies that they’ve worked on during the past six years is critical entry points (CEP).

"What we’re doing there is basically trying to determine if we can find out where the most likely spots are in the beef chain that pathogens can come into the system," he says. Once those spots are identified, measures are put in place to prevent that from happening.

Identification of these points was an important factor in improving Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) systems in the harvesting process, and it also helped the government develop its HACCP regulations in an effort to determine how much contamination was coming from outside the chain.

One of the newest procedures NCBA’s research arm is examining is a cattle cleaning system to ensure cattle are pathogen-free before they ever enter the plant. Reagan says ideally, cattle would be "sparkling clean," from the inside, out.

He says a lot of work is being done with chlorate. You feed it to cattle and it prevents E. coli and other pathogens from attaching to the gut. If those pathogens do enter a cow’s system, they just pass through. He envisions this being used at slaughter facilities, but it could be used in pre-harvest efforts at ranches or feedyards, too.

"The other thing we’re getting kicked off right now is virulence studies. We hear about salmonella and E. coli. But we’re starting to learn that not all salmonellas or O157s are the same," says Reagan. "We have some to which humans appear to be more susceptible, and we’re in the process of doing DNA fingerprinting to learn more about these pathogens that are present and if they are virulent to humans."

If they discover that one form of E. coli will kill another form that is harmful to humans, then they might work to make conditions favorable for the "good" E. coli to kill off the harmful strain.

Reagan says they’re also looking at establishing interventions for beef trimmings to better ensure its safety, and they’re continuing to do work with irradiation.

He emphasizes that there is no "silver bullet," and even though new processes are always in development, they rarely replace a technology already used. They just build upon each other to create a "multiple hurdle system," which makes it nearly impossible for bacteria to survive the process.

Although great strides have been made in food safety at the harvest level, it doesn’t mean that producers can’t do anything pre-harvest.

"What a lot of producers don’t realize is that 15 percent to maybe 30 percent of their income is in the sale of cull cows and how those cows are handled before they go into the food chain is really critical," says Hale. "For instance, where you give shots and withdrawal times, those things are much more closely scrutinized up the chain now."

For example, McDonald’s has come up with food safety specifications that they’re requiring of their suppliers. Hale says then the "suppliers of the suppliers" have to meet those specifications. Although that’s where it ends right now, it is creeping down into the cow-calf sector, since cull cows are the source of most ground beef.

If one of these suppliers is having problems with metal or bacteria, they may realize a particular auction market is a hot spot for this activity and quit buying from them. While the animals can’t be traced back to the specific ranch yet, they can be traced back to the auction market.

"We, all of us up and down the chain, need to take responsibility for what we do. If there is an issue, then those issues need to be taken care of," says Hale. "If there are problems in our industry, how can we solve them if we don’t have that information flow back and forth? It’s not a comforting way to look at it, but we need to take responsibility for what we do. Then people are more apt to do things right in the first place."

Although the battle of beef safety is never ending, it looks like the industry may have the upper hand. But there’s no time to rest.