(Let another reason to know your farmer/rancher and buy from a local you know is raising healthy products)
Tainted meats point to superbug C. diff in food
Study finds gut germ in 40 percent of grocery meats; CDC says not to worry
By JoNel Aleccia

A potentially deadly intestinal germ increasingly found in hospitals is also showing up in a more unsavory setting: grocery store meats.

More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for Clostridium difficile, a gut bug known as C. diff., according to newly complete analysis of 2006 data collected by a University of Arizona scientist.

Nearly 30 percent of the contaminated samples of ground beef, pork and turkey and ready-to-eat meats like summer sausage were identical or closely related to a super-toxic strain of C. diff blamed for growing rates of illness and death in the U.S. — raising the possibility that the bacterial infections may be transmitted through food.

“These data suggest that domestic animals, by way of retail meats, may be a source of C. difficile for human infection,” said J. Glenn Songer, a professor of veterinary science at the Tucson school, who talked with msnbc.com about work now under review by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But specialists from the CDC and scientists who study C. diff said the connection between the presence of C. diff bacteria and infection has not been established and that there’s not enough evidence about food transmission to warrant public alarm.

Link to con.