There seems a lot here who like their hamburger rare.
It's my impression--correct or incorrect--that while that used to be okay, it's not so okay any more.
It used to be that ground beef was made at local, or at least regional, butcheries, which limited contagion.
But now that most ground beef is made at large national packinghouses, the peril of contagion is greater.
And so I've always operated under the assumption that it used to be okay to dine on pink hamburger, but that's not such a good idea any more.
By coincidence Frank I am reading a novel titled TOXIN by Robin Cook.
I do not usually read such things but the local used book store had a sale of the Readers Digests editions with the 4 book series at .50 cents a piece. I walked out with 10 of them for $5.00 a total of 40 storeys .
Back to the subject, this story is about the meat packing industry going from the farms that sell their sick and downed cows to the processing company's that occasionally have a problem with disease. From there it goes to the big time Burger joints--Mickey D's etc and how a small mistake in the cooking can become a nightmare for the people that eat an under cooked hamburger.
It becomes gruesome as the details of how an under cooked hamburger can cause some horrific problems not just for a patient but the doctors trying to figure out what is going on as some of the symptoms are in no way related to food poisoning.
Makes me wonder how any of us survive eating in a dimly lit bar a hamburger that may have been undercooked by a minimin wage kid that may take their break to smoke a joint.
In the last couple of years there has been massive recalls on ground beef, most of the beef can be consumed safely if cooked to well done. If cooked with any pink, it can and does cause death, or at the very least blindness, kidney or liver failure.
Sad that so much we love to eat is such a problem today. My sad loss is the fact that raw eggs can cause very bad things to happen. Remember when our parents or grandparents would bake a cake adding raw eggs and after putting the cake in the oven called for us to "LICK the bowl" ? Cannot do that anymore.
Steak is another thing, medium rare please with french fries and gravy.
