UK Authorities try to ban burgers being cooked "rare" or "medium-rare"

[TylerDurden]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/9731808/Why-the-rare-burger-may-soon-become-endangered.html

The article points out that if such bans go through, we will be faced with banning of steak tartare etc.

[LePatron7]

I bet its just a matter of time before the government decides all meat, eggs, and produce have to be irradiated before they're put on store shelves.

[PaleoPhil]

This is outrageous!

James Armitage, the council’s food health and safety manager, said: “This is about making sure customers are eating meat that is not a threat to their health.

In other words, "We know what's best for you and we'll decide what's in your best interests."

Are there any organizations fighting this and defending people's right to eat what they want in the UK?

[TylerDurden]

Are there any organizations fighting this and defending people's right to eat what they want in the UK?

Not really. It's a good thing that Americans have a traditionally rebellious anti-government spirit given the American Insurgency     in 1775 and the ACW, as that  spirit has helped build up grassroots support against FDA etc. attempts to ban several raw foods. In the UK, few people even blinked when it was revealed that a lot of meat sold at stadiums and elsewhere is discarded halal or kosher meat. The only reason England still allows raw dairy to be sold is that the government, unlike the Scottish one, has somehow forgotten about the issue.

[raw-al]

In the province that I live in in Canada the idiot Premier wanted to ban all kinds of things such as Sushi bars.

One of his cabinet ministers  drinks raw milk from the guy who was arrested for selling it.
http://www.glencoltonfarms.com/

Apparently the rest of the government including Health Canada was willing to go along with legalizing it but this donkey-brained idiot used his power to quash it.

[eveheart]

Wait a minute! Have we forgotten that grain-fed beef is most susceptible to E. coli bacteria? I can still remember the E.coli outbreak twenty years ago that was traced back to burgers served at a fast-food restaurant. That outbreak led to stricter monitoring of cooking temperatures in fast-food restaurants.

I prefer to source my own properly-raised food and eat it raw, not rely on a stranger deciding to buy the cheapest animal and cook the hell out of it.

Government has always meddled, and I'm not going to raise a cry and make it meddle more. Most idiots I know think that the government will protect them, and so they empower the government to meddle. Ya can't fight the world and win.

[PaleoPhil]

If people want to eat raw grain-fed beef, they should be allowed to. I do at times and am not worried about the fact that it might contain some e-coli. E-coli already exists in most people's intestinal tracts. It's the type and quantity of the e-coli plus the susceptibility of the person that causes problems. Reasonable warning labels and signs are one thing, but bannings are another.

Most E. coli strains are harmless, but some serotypes can cause serious food poisoning in humans, and are occasionally responsible for product recalls due to food contamination.[2][3] The harmless strains are part of the normal flora of the gut.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli

External "germs" are not the whole story--there's also what Claude Bernard called the "terrain" or  the “milieu interne,” which is today generally called the microbiome.

[eveheart]

If people want to eat raw grain-fed beef, they should be allowed to. I do at times and am not worried about the fact that it might contain some e-coli. E-coli already exists in most people's intestinal tracts. It's the type and quantity of the e-coli plus the susceptibility of the person that causes problems.

I was thinking more about studies that show that grainfed beef develop strains of E. coli that are more resistant to stomach acid. I read a discussion about this on this forum. Wikipedia has relevant citations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding#E._coli

This is because feeding grain to cattle makes their normally pH-neutral digestive tract abnormally acidic; over time, the pathogenic E. coli becomes acid-resistant.[25] If humans ingest this acid-resistant E. coli via grain-feed beef, a large number of them may survive past the stomach, causing an infection.[26] A study by the USDA Meat and Animal Research Center in Lincoln Nebraska (2000) has confirmed the Cornell research.

[PaleoPhil]

Yeah, if the gov'ts want to ban something, they should ban the use of antibiotics on cattle. I still think that if antibiotics are going to be legal to use on cattle and people want take the risk of eating grainfed meat raw they should be able to if they choose to and the risk doesn't frighten me that much. I'll bet that longtime rawists could eat moderate amounts of even the most pathogenic e-coli without getting seriously ill. The terrain is important.

[goodsamaritan]

It means factory meat is so bad, they feel the need to do these measures.

[raw-al]

It means factory meat is so bad, they feel the need to do these measures.

I doubt the authors of these laws have a clue about factory farming. It's as you say though that band-aids are being lumped on the previous bad ideas, ie factory farming.

[TylerDurden]

I've heard of a number of people who've regained their health while on a diet consisting mainly of raw, grainfed meats. It's not ideal, and I strongly suspect that recovery took much longer on such diets, but the absence of heat-created toxins(except AGEs to a lesser extent), the presence of enzymes, and bacteria would likely negate much of the potential damage, and allow recovery. Also, food-poisoning tends to happen far more commonly to very vulnerable portions of the population, (ie the elderly, the very ill, babies(especially those born premature), so that  e coli etc. is way more likely to harm those whose guts are already long ruined  by cooked food diets.

[Iguana]

I'll bet that longtime rawists could eat moderate amounts of even the most pathogenic e-coli without getting seriously ill. The terrain is important.

The danger for us is not bacteria but abnormal molecules in the feeding stuff produced by heat, artificial selection (notably in wheat and such) and other processes.

the absence of heat-created toxins

If the grain has been hot dried, which is most often the case, then there’s plenty of heat-created toxins in the raw meat.

[TylerDurden]

If the grain has been hot dried, which is most often the case, then there’s plenty of heat-created toxins in the raw meat.

Yes there are some, but nowhere near as much than if the meat was cooked. For example, I once saw a study which showed that raw, grainfed chicken had half as many AGEs/advanced glycation end products as boiled, grainfed chicken.