Escherichia coli

E. coli is the abbreviation for Escherichia coli, a Gram negative bacterium that is found in the lower intestine for many endotherms (warm-blooded animals). Not only are these bacteria mostly harmless to people, they are quite important for our survival because they produce vitamin K2.

Not all strains of Escherichia coli are harmless, however. Some strains, such as O111:B4 or O157:H7, can cause serious food poisoning, sometimes with deadly consequences, especially in the very young, the elderly or people with weakened immune systems.

Because E. coli can survive for short periods outside the human body, it is often used as an indicator for contamination of water with fecal matter. This is one of the indicators, for example, that are published on the Canadian Blue Flag website.

This ability to survive outside the body can also lead to food contamination, possibly leading to food poisoning. Because these contaminations are often highly localised, they are not always detected during routine food testing. If the possibility of a contamination is suspected later on, a food recall is initiated. Although very costly, these food recalls can sometimes save lives.

The negative result of these recalls is that the public often gets the impression that food quality is going down, whereas the opposite is true. Food poisonings are becoming so rare that they are now newsworthy. Just a few decades ago, food poisonings were so common that they were hardly ever mentioned in the media.

Needless to say that scaremongers, conspiracy theorists and similar paralogicals enjoy these recalls to no end, exploiting them to the fullest and claiming that these only occur because “big business” and the government are conspiring to kill the poor public.

The fact that we have food recalls is not a sign of a badly working food distribution, it is a sign that the system is becoming better at detecting ever smaller contaminations.