About Alex Avery Expertise Questions regarding organic food, agriculture, pesticides, herbicides, environmental issues, food safety, bacterial infection, agricultural economics, crop biotechnology, wildlife conservation, erosion, global food issues.
Experience Director of research and education with the Center for Global Food Issues at Hudson Institute. Prior to joining Hudson in 1994, I was a McKnight research fellow at Purdue University, where I worked to develop drought-resistant sorghum varieties for the Sudan of Africa.
I have spoken to a wide variety of national and international audiences and have represented the Center at the United Nations World Food Summit in Rome. I have written numerous articles which were published in leading newspapers and am currently working on a book.
Organizations Center for Global Food Issues
Publications Washington Times, American Outlook, Global Food Quarterly, Des Moines Register, USA Today Magazine, Canada's Western Producer, New York Post and others.
Awards and Honors McKnight Research Fellowship at Purdue University
Question How likely is it that you will get food poisoning
from meats if they aren't cooked just right?
(I'd prefer the answer in percents)
Answer Ah, your question is straight forward, but the answer is not. The danger is from foodborne bacteria that may or may not be present on the meat.
If the meat is free of pathogens, it can be eaten safely raw, such as Steak Tartar. However, even contaminated meat is safe to eat once cooked at a high enough temperature to kill the bacteria (>160 degrees F)
Different meats pose different risks. Generally, ground meats are more risky than whole flesh cuts (like steak). This is because bacteria on the surface of the meat are incorporated throughout a ground-meat product, so cooking a hamburger thoroughly is important to kill any bacteria in the center of the burger patty. In contrast, cooking a steak thoroughly isn't as important because any bacteria are on the surface of the steak where they will be killed by the high surface heat.
You may be better able to come up with some comparitive risks by examining data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov). The CDC estimates that there are 76 million food poisoning cases annually in the U.S., with some 5,000 deaths (mostly among the elderly).
Yet, even these numbers are just educated guesses. Obtaining a definitive diagnosis of the cause of a foodborne illness and its food source is very difficult, especially against a background that includes similar illnesses caused by stomach viruses that are passed from person-to-person. (i.e. non-foodborne).
Also, vegetables are increasingly being recognized as a source of foodborne bacteria, with more cases traced back to vegetables in recent years, than to meats.
