The North American Meat Institute (NAMI) and American Meat Science Association (AMSA) have released the newest video in the Meat Mythcrusher series. The video addresses myths about the prevalence of foodborne illnesses from different sources and explains that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data show that produce, and not meat and poultry, is the most common source of foodborne illness in the U.S.

The video features Kathleen Glass, Ph.D., associate director of the Food Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Glass explains the risks of foodborne illness from a variety of sources including meat and poultry, noting that the most common illness is norovirus which is often associated with food handlers. She also discusses many of the advances in the meat industry that has helped make meat and poultry safer.

“The meat industry has been doing a lot of work to improve safety overall and has made a lot of strides in the last decade or so,” Dr. Glass said. “With that being said, they’re always looking for the holy grail, always looking for more improvement and that’s one of the reasons we do the research we do, trying to find novel processes and ingredients that will be useful to the industry and be able to help public health.”

Dr. Glass also discusses the reasons why contamination may occur in foods and steps consumers can take to ensure their food is safe.

The Meat MythCrusher video series seeks to bust some of the most common myths surrounding meat and poultry production and processing.

It is now in its fifth year and the new video is the 43^rd in the series. Altogether the videos  have been viewed nearly 100,000 times. Other video topics include myths surrounding meat nutrition, antibiotic use in livestock, “Superbugs” in meat, Meatless Monday, hormone use in animals, ammonia in ground beef, grass-fed beef and more.

All of the videos and more are available at http://www.meatmythcrushers.com/.

Source: NAMI