AOL's Interview about E.Coli strains

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According to an interview conducted by AOL with Dr. David Acheson, safety food experts have made numerous attempts to grab the attention of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to try and gain control of the 6 strains of E.Coli, besides the E.Coli 0157 strain that can be found in food.

"Not all of the 6 strains are as dangerous as the E.Coli 0157" according to Dr. David Acheson, who is the former assistant commissioner for the food protection at the Food and Drug Administration.

The top 6 feared strains other then the 0157, are strains that are sickening as many as thousands of people annually in the US. The strains he is specifically talking about are: E. coli O26, O103, O111, O121, O45 and O145. Although there are other strains, these strains are said to belong to the top six feared strains due to their high frequency of being reported in infected persons.

The CDC reports over 30,000 illnesses and deaths a year, this does not even include the cases that go unreported or the cases that are also undetected. It is said by the CDC also that the actually number of cases are actually 38 to 40 times more then the number reported due to these types of things happening.

This happens because some people try to handle it on their own whether that be using medication or seeking medical care, or the tests that are being conducted to test for pathogens are sometimes not tested for certain ones, making things like E.Coli go unseen when they are actually present.

Dr. Griffin also noted that only 4 to 5 percent will routinely look for Shiga toxins in stool samples of a person that has diarrhea. With this happening. "If labs don’t look for it, they won't find it, but the existence of these illness-causing strains is well known, even to the USDA" he says.

This is an issue by itself because people are living with E.Coli and not knowing it, could be spreading it and it could be something that is later fatal.

According to other statements made in the interview;
"Its own scientists from the agency's Agricultural Research Service and the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center documented the non-O157 strains in 1,186 samples of beef trim imported
to meet the U.S. demand for lean ground beef. The testing was done on meat from Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay and the U.S.
All the traditional food-borne bad boys were found in the samples, but in addition to the salmonella, campylobacter, listeria and E. coli, the scientists found 99 different strains
of non-0157 Shiga.
Between 20 percent and 30 percent of the beef trim sampled was positive for non-0157, and 13 different strains or serotypes were identified, many, the scientists said, for the first
time in meat".

References:

1. Acheson, David. "The 'Holy Six' Strains of E. Coli That Many Experts Fear." Top News & Analysis, US, World, Sports, Celebrity & Weird News. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. http://www.aolnews.com/2010/09/28/the-holy-six-strains-of-e-coli-that-many-experts-fear/.