Almost 70% of pork in stores unsafe, Consumer Reports says

Melanie Haiken, Contributor

Beware when you head for the meat market: Consumer Reports yesterday announced that 69 percent of all raw pork samples tested were contaminated with the dangerous bacteria Yersinia enterocolitica. Product testers analyzed 198 samples of whole and ground pork and found them to contain the little-known bacteria, which causes fever and gastrointestinal illness with diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach cramps.

Cases of infection by Yersinia enterocolitica are estimated to top 100,000 a year in the U.S., but experts say that for every case diagnosed, 120 more aren’t reported, attributed to stomach flu or general food poisoning.

Creepiest of all, the study found that many of the bacteria found in the pork were resistant to multiple antibiotics, suggesting that current methods of protecting meat from bacterial contamination are insufficient to deal with evolving mutations.

The January 2013 Consumer Reports article article posited that low dose antibiotics used in pork feed may be “accelerating the growth of drug-resistant `superbugs’ that threaten human health.” The Pork Producers Council immediately challenged the report on the basis of testing methods and small sample size.