David KirbyAuthor/Journalist
Posted: September 15, 2010 07:00 AM

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But that's not the case for MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), or drug-resistant staff infection. In 2005, U.S. hospitals treated more than 278,000 MRSA cases. Nearly 100,000 people faced life threatening illness and 18,650 died: 50 percent more than the number of AIDS death that year.

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Now MRSA is showing up in random samples of raw pork sold in supermarkets, and to a lesser extent in beef and chicken. Yet these potentially deadly cuts of meat -- unlike the salmonella-tainted eggs -- have never been yanked off the shelves.

Why not? Because no government inspector has ever tested live animals or meat for MRSA.

Fortunately, other people have stepped in where government has failed. A University of Iowa study published last year found that one Midwestern hog factory farm was a nonstop breeding pool for the deadly disease: More than a third of all adult swine and 100 percent of the younger pigs aged 9 and 12 weeks were carriers, as were 64 percent of the workers. A second hog factory had zero MRSA infections.

"Our results show that colonization of swine by MRSA was very common in one of two corporate swine production systems," said lead author Tara Smith, adding that MRSA transmission on hog factories, "could complicate efforts to reduce MRSA transmission statewide and beyond."

The infected herd, incidentally, had twice as many hogs as the uninfected one, and ALL of those little piggies, presumably, went to market.

Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/mrsa-in-meat-why-no-recal_b_715516.html

wow this is just horrid.

I agree MT7.

It is always intriguing to me that the conscious act of eating any meat is acceptable to so many? Not trying to be prescriptive here, but I have been off meat for 34 years now, since my enlightening experience, and I am very grateful for that. The "protein" argument holds no water at all!