Eating rare steaks does not increase chances of food poisoning

Main Category: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses
Article Date: 25 May 2004 - 0:00 PDT


If kitchen utensils are kept clean, eating rare steaks does not increase your chances of being struck down with a bout of food poisoning. Researchers at the University of Nottingham, UK, added E-coli camples to steaks and them cooked them rare.

All the bacteria died. They found that the danger was not from the meat, but rather from the utensils. If the utensils that had been used to cut the raw meat were not cleaned, then the risk of food poisoning was much higher. However, this would be the case for a well-done steak as well.

The Meat and Livestock Commission, UK, said that this proves that the idea that eating rare steaks is dangerous is nothing but a myth.

The tests were carried out for the Meat and Livestock Commission.

The researchers spiked various fillets of steak with E Coli. The bacteria were only present after cooking when the tongs that had been used to turn them had also been used to handle the steaks when they were raw.

The scientists found that when the tongs had been sterilised in ethanol before using them to cook the steaks, the E coli was no longer present on the rare steak.

The UK Food Standards Agency also said that there is no danger of food poisoning if you are careful with your kitchen utensils.

Even if the middle of the meat is pink and rare it does not matter. The harmful bacteria contaminates the outside of the meat, which is destroyed when cooking, even if you prepare a rare steak.

One should be more careful with minced meat , burgers and sausages. The bacteria is spread throughout the whole product during manufacture. You should make sure you cook this kind of meat right through until it is piping hot.

The secret of avoiding food poisoning is to make sure hands and utensils do not contaminate the cooked food if they have been in contact with the raw food.

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