Learn from Lauren, cook your burgers.

Just about 34 years ago today 6-year-old Lauren Rudolph was about to eat an undercooked, E. coli O157:H7-tainted hamburger at a San Diego area Jack-in-the-Box.  She would die just after Christmas.  

Lauren would be the first of four children to die. Eventually, more than 700 people were sickened across five states. Nearly 200 people were hospitalized, many suffering life-altering complications. The common denominators; hamburger with a pathogenic bacteria, that at the time was perfectly legal to sell, and hamburger that was not fully cooked to kill the bacteria before it killed the customer.

Changes were made. Post 1993 the USDA determined that E. coli O157:H7 would be considered and adulterant in ground beef and the FDA Food Code provided new guidelines for food safety practices in retail and food service establishments. According to the Food Code, ground meats such as hamburger would now have to be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 155 degrees F (68 degrees C) for 15 seconds to ensure harmful bacteria are killed. In addition, the USDA recommended cooking ground beef to a slightly higher internal temperature of 160 degrees F (71 degrees C) to ensure all bacteria are effectively eliminated.

The combination of banning E. coli O157:H7 in ground beef and increasing cook temperatures, drove the number of E. coli O157:H7 cases linked hamburger consumption down – significantly down. Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), a particularly nasty outcome of the infection, used to be called “The Hamburger Disease,” today, not at all.

Cooking hamburger to code saved lives. These temperatures help ensure that any pathogens that might be present in the ground meat are destroyed, reducing the risk of foodborne illness. The combination of making E. coli O157:H7 and adulterant and increasing cook temperatures essentially “put me out of the beef business,” or at least I thought so until recently.

In July of this year, twenty-two E. coli O157:H7 illnesses, with four HUS cases and two deaths were linked to undercooked Wagyu burgers served at five restaurants in Montana. Samples of the suspected product were sent to the Montana Public Health Laboratory for testing, which allowed for laboratory confirmation of the outbreak source. On July 25, 2024, the laboratory received confirmatory testing results of clinical and food samples verifying ground beef as the exposure of concern. Specifically, the source of the outbreak was Wagyu beef from one lot number. All patients reported eating undercooked or made-to-order burgers made with Wagyu beef at one of multiple restaurants in Flathead County. The last known date of consumption was July 14, 2024.

Then in the last week the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) identified 15 cases of E. coli O157:H7 infection in people who had eaten burgers at multiple locations of Red Cow, a table-service restaurant chain with locations in Hennepin, Ramsey and Olmsted counties. One additional case reported dining at Hen House Eatery in Minneapolis, which received the same ground beef product suspected in this investigation. So far, patients have reported meal dates of Oct. 31 through Nov. 7. Patients range in age from 9 to 70 years old. Two patients have been hospitalized. Additional potential cases are still under investigation. 

Fact: Ground beef can still contain harmful bacteria such as E. coli, Salmonella, and Listeria. These can cause serious foodborne illnesses if the meat is not cooked properly. Cooking to an internal temperature of at least 160 degrees F (71 degrees C), as recommended by the USDA, ensures that these pathogens are destroyed. Ground beef is more susceptible to bacterial contamination throughout because the muscle has been minced, mixing bacteria present on the meat’s surface into the interior. Unlike whole cuts of meat, where bacteria are primarily on the surface, ground beef must be cooked thoroughly to ensure it is safe to eat.

I fear that the lack of E. coli O157:H7 cases linked to ground beef over the past twenty years is lulling restaurants and consumers into a false sense that undercooking hamburger is safe – it is not. Cooking hamburger thoroughly by reaching the recommended internal temperature is a critical step in food preparation that helps protect against serious health risks and ensures that the meat is safe for consumption.

Please learn from Lauren, cook your burgers.

Republished with permission from Bill Marler and Marler Clark. Copyright (c) Marler Clark LLP, PS. All rights reserved.