RE: Super bug bacteria in meat and poultry, study says
Here is the key paragraph of the scientists' report:
The distinct S. aureus populations on each product type suggest that food animals are the predominant source of contamination. While a portion of the S. aureus isolates may have been the result of human contamination, a uniform pattern of human-associated strains was not observed. Additional studies tracing S. aureus genotypes from farm to retail are required to definitively identify the sources of S. aureus contamination.
In other words, they don't know where exactly the contamination occurs. They assume that because a particular strain of S. aureus generally occurs with a particular type of meat product, then the source must be animal-related, not human-related.
However, it's clear the scientists did not seriously consider contamination at the meat-packing plants or test for it there. A S. aureus strain reaches the meat-packing plants, where all the meat is in contact with all the other meat and spreads throughout that plant. While each meat-packing plant line is completely disassembled and sterilized each night (it's a federal law), the study does not consider that the meat-packing plant employees themselves may carry the bacteria around on their skin and reinfect the plant each day (nobody sterilizes the employees, and there's no guarantee that they even take a bath each night or wear the same clothes each day without laundering). S. aureus is quite happy on human skin, which could be an easy source of recontamination each day.
Taking the samples at the retail level and assuming the contamination must occur at the farm is just bad science. The fact that the scientists had no problem with implicating farms on a CBS report just makes it junk science.
