Grapes On Your Meat?

At first glance, you might mistake "Golden Staph" for a coveted apparatus in a J. R. R. Tolkien novel destined to tip the balance between good and evil or a sought after treasure in the next Indiana Jones film before realizing it's not that kind of "staff". Nay, the grandeur of Golden Staph isn't nearly as prominent, it is but a lowly bacterium. Better known to the scientific community as Staphylococcus aureus, this bacterium is known for causing illnesses. It's breadth of known illnesses include skin infections such as pimples, impetigo, boils, cellulitis folliculitis, carbuncles, scalded skin syndrome, and abscesses and continues to span onward to life threatening diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis, osteomyelitis, endocarditis, toxic shock syndrome(TSS), bacteremia, and sepsis.

Mmmmm...  grapes. Err...wait a second! Don't eat those micro-grapes!

While one study performed at the UCLA School of Medicine (performed by A. Cole, et. al) estimates roughly 20% of humans carry Staphylococcus aureus in their nasal fluid, it is also possible to be afflicted with it from your food. The Instituto de Productos Lácteos de Asturias located in Spain claims that,"Biofilms are a common cause of food comtamination with undesirable bacteria." Biofilms are "microbial communities whose architecture includes microorganisms, biotic substances produced by these microorganisms and attached organic and inorganic substances from the environment." (Schlegelová) Gutiérrez et al. aimed to determine the presence of Golden Staph on,"food-contact surfaces in diary, meat, and seafood environments." (Gutiérrez) Their research shows that out of 442 collected samples, approximately 6.1% of them had a presence of S. aureus. The study goes on to state,"Profiles were clustered into 4 groups which were quite related to specific food environments. All isolates harboured some potential virulence factors such as enterotoxin production genes, biofilm forming-associated genes, antibiotic resistance or lysogeny. PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) fingerprints of bacterial communities co-existing with S. aureus revealed the presence of bacteria either involved in food spoilage or of concern for food safety in all food environments." (Gutiérrez) Most alarmingly, the conclusion they came to was that food industry surfaces could be serving as a "reservoir for S. aureus forming complex communities with undesirable bacteria in multi-species biofilms." (Gutiérrez)

A possible fix is to remove biofilms from the surfaces the food industry is using. However, biofilms pose an obstacle in that bacteria composing the biofilms are becoming increasingly more resistant to sanitation measures and disinfectants.

Drug Resistant Strain of Staphylococcus Aureus

Are these the same resistant bacteria plaguing the healthcare industry? Could the antibiotics fed to the animals being slaughtered be a contributing factor? What will all of this mean for the consumer of these products in the future? Stay tuned and lets explore all of this together.



Works Cited

Cole, et al. Determinants of Staphylococcus aureus Nasal Carriage. 8 Nov 2001. Web. Oct 2012.

Gutiérrez, et al. Incidence of Staphylococcus aureus and analysis of bacterialassociated. 28 Sep 2012. Web. Oct 2012.

Schlegelová, et al. Microbial biofilms in the food industry. Feb 2007. Web. Oct 2012.

Bacteria & The Meat Industry

I've long been perplexed by the things we eat, often wondering who the first to try it was. Cinnamon, for instance, is bark from a tree. Did somebody just wander around aimlessly, gnawing on trees until they discovered cinnamon? How many trees did he or she chew on afterwards in the quest to find more tasty bark? Eggs are another food I must question, as they're the product of the menstruation cycle in a chicken. A woman flushes out unfertilized egg and the uterine lining during her period, and a chicken expels unfertilized eggs during her menstruation that we then eat. When it occurred to me that we are essentially eating chicken periods, it greatly disturbed me. Well, eating animals has become equally disturbing to me, only compounded by the information I've uncovered in regards to the living standards and environments these animals must endure. Bacteria and illness are wide spread problems in today's mass market where factory farms are the status quo. So this begs this question, what are some solutions to the bacteria? Well, apparently, bacteria is a huge issue after the killing of the animal as well.

During my quest to find answers to pre-slaughter bacteria, I stumbled upon a couple of studies looking for new meat preservation techniques. 

The first study suggests maggot meat spray. Appealing idea, right? Hang in there, it gets better! The concept is rather simple. We have no evidence that house fly larvae are afflicted by any serious diseases, yet they thrive on rotting meat. This lends itself to the concept that the flies have strong immune systems, perhaps even equipped with anti-bacterial properties. The study in reference was performed on chilled pork (Wang Y., et al) at the School of Life Sciences located in Guangzhou, China. The abstract states, "the preservation effects of a housefly pupae peptide mixture, nisin, and sodium dehydroacetate (DHA-S) on the number of mesophilic aerobic bacteria (MAB), total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N), and pH value of chilled pork were compared." (Wang) After comparison, the abstract reads as follows, "All results showed that a good preservation effect was observed among 3 treatments with the peptide mixture of housefly pupae, nisin, and DHA-S and that there was no significant difference among them. These results indicate that housefly peptide mixture has a great potential as a food preservative."


From a business perspective, this will likely seem a great idea to the industry, so long as they can either hide it from the consumers or get the consumers on board with it, as the abstract advocates that this is a, "low-cost and simple method." (Wang) Given the conditions on these factory farms, it's apparent that it's all about the bottom dollar and not the health of the "product" or the consumer.

From a health perspective, you need not fret either. The housefly pupae, "were washed with 75% ethanol twice, air dried, and homogenized thorooughly using a tissue blender in a 0.2 M acetic acid solution. The homogenate was then centrifuged at 10000 x g for 30 min at 4 °C." The best part of the study states, "After the extraction of the housefly pupae peptide mixture, the remains can be used as a protein for foodstuffs, thereby increasing protein supply." (Wang) Not only will you be eating clean maggot remains, but nutritional maggot remains!

If you can't fathom the idea of munching on maggot remains, maybe a bacteria eating virus is more your style? The good news? This one is already FDA approved! Bacteriophages are viruses which infect bacteria. The bacteriophage which has been approved as a food additive is lytic, which means, "that the phage destroys its host during its life cycle without integrating into the host genome. This type of phage works by attaching itself to a bacterium and injecting its genetic material into the cell. The phage takes over the metabolic machinery of the bacterium, forcing it to produce hundreds of new phages and causing the bacterial cell walls to break open. This process kills the bacterium and releases many new phages, which seek out other bacteria to invade and repeat the cycle." (Bren)

Given the options of eating maggot remains or consuming viruses, I think I'll make some veggie fajitas instead!


Works Cited:

Wang, Y. "Effect of extracted housefly pupae peptide mixture on chilled pork preservation." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Aug. 2010. Web. 11 Sept. 2012.

Bren, Linda. "Bacteria-Eating Virus Approved as Food Additive." Bacteria-Eating Virus Approved as Food Additive. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Jan.-Feb. 2007. Web. 11 Sept. 2012.