Nearly three-fourths of all cases of E. coli disease are linked to ground beef. The result is a new kind of pasteurization made available to U.S. consumers in 2000. In 1865, Louis Pasteur introduced a method of destroying pathogenic bacteria in milk. By heating the milk to 145 degrees for 30 minutes, rapidly cooling it and then storing it below 50 degrees, bacteria were eliminated without significantly changing the milk's composition, flavor or nutritional value. The process has food producers using electron-beam accelerators to bombard their products with electrons.
Hamburger patties are prime targets for the barrage.
There's no residual radiation. The radicals generated by the beam go away in less than a second. Nan Unklesbay, the principal food scientist in the group, monitored the effects of the process on hamburger patties. Unklesbay found that the frozen patties were not significantly altered in any way and none of the harmful bacteria survived in the food. Five U.S. meat processors are cold pasteurizing their hamburger in Sioux City, Iowa.