I was referring to the USDA definition of ground beef. I’m guessing that the regulations apply to beef that fits whatever the USDA definition is and that definition only applies to beef that leaves the processing plant that way. Mind you this is all idle speculation on my part. I would guess that a whole intact primal, say a tenderloin, is still considered that even if the restaurant chooses to grind it prior to serving. “Ground beef” I think has a specific legal definition that is more nuanced than beef that is ground at any old point in the process.
Mind you that I could be completely wrong here, but that was what I was implying.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:39, topic:584679”]
This makes no sense.
If heating the meat to a specific temperature (160F?) will kill the e. coli in the food, then cleaning at that same temperature would kill the e. coli in the grinding machinery, right?
[/QUOTE]
Yes and no. They clean the machinery with steam (212+ degree water) and it does kill e.coli. However the caveat is that it doesn’t kill 100% of it. Things can be cleaned, sanitized or sterilized. Sterilized is effectively 100% clean, meat processors don’t have to sterilize the entire plant as that would be impossible. So he’s technically correct that you can’t clean a place well enough to destroy 100% of e.coli, but that’s not because it’s impossible just that it’s impractical.
Everything in this world probably has some miniscule amount of e.coli on it. Your keyboard for example. Even if you sprayed it down with bleach there’d still probably be one or two organisms left when you were done. That’s basically harmless, but it’s technically true.