One hundred thousand E. coli can dance on the head of a pin; it may only take 50 to make you sick enough to die. Benign E. coli are everywhere, even in your own pink gut right now, and all E. coli can live on (or in) things as different as sprouts, burgers and water. But if you were able to trace back far enough, their reservoir is mostly likely the gut of mammal: a goat, a sheep, a deer, even a majestic elk or a dog. They’re most often associated with cows.
The dangerous E. coli, the ones causing the horrorshow in Germany right now, are called STEC (Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli, for the name of their horrific poison, and pronounced ess-teck). And if you think it’s only a German problem, you’re so wrong.
STEC usually migrate to food through direct or indirect contact with the contents of the animal’s intestinal tract: dung, not to put too fine a point on it. Whether the growth or even origin of STEC — which have only been associated with human illness for 30 years — could have resulted in part from feeding cattle grain (as opposed to their natural grass), or was aided by industrial agriculture’s unnecessary reliance on prophylactic antibiotics (a shameful story, but one that must wait), may never be known.
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The dangerous E. coli, the ones causing the horrorshow in Germany right now, are called STEC (Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli, for the name of their horrific poison, and pronounced ess-teck). And if you think it’s only a German problem, you’re so wrong.
STEC usually migrate to food through direct or indirect contact with the contents of the animal’s intestinal tract: dung, not to put too fine a point on it. Whether the growth or even origin of STEC — which have only been associated with human illness for 30 years — could have resulted in part from feeding cattle grain (as opposed to their natural grass), or was aided by industrial agriculture’s unnecessary reliance on prophylactic antibiotics (a shameful story, but one that must wait), may never be known.
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