Mechanical Tenderization Makes Rare Steak Risky

Reader Contribution by Staff
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True or False: It’s safe to eat your steak rare, because unlike ground beef, dangerous bacteria don’t infiltrate intact cuts of meat.

If you answered true, you’re surely not alone. That’s what we’ve been told all along, right? While this theory often is correct, it doesn’t apply to steaks that have been mechanically tenderized. The process, whereby small needles or blades are repeatedly inserted into a steak, transfers deadly bacteria from the surface to the interior. This means the center of a processed steak must be cooked to a minimum of 160 degrees Fahrenheit in order to be considered safe to eat.

How do you avoid mechanically tenderized steaks? You can’t, at this point, if you’re buying your steaks at the supermarket. There are no laws requiring that processed steaks be labeled as such. According to Food Safety News, The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service states that over 50 million pounds of mechanically tenderized meat products are sold each month. And if you want further reason to be cautious, keep in mind that on December 24, the USDA announced a voluntary recall of almost 250,000 of these mechanically tenderized steaks when a number of E.coli-related illnesses began to surface in five states (Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Washington and South Dakota).

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