E Coli infected cider.

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highgravitybacon

highgravitybacon

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E. COLI EHEC - USA (37): (MICHIGAN), UNPASTEURIZED CIDER
********************************************************
A ProMED-mail post
<http://www.promedmail.org>
ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases
<http://www.isid.org>

Date: Thu 8 Nov 2012
Source: Up North Live [edited]
<http://www.upnorthlive.com/news/story.aspx?id=822948>


An investigation is underway into a possible link between several _E.
coli_ cases and apple cider in Antrim County. The Health Department of
Northwest Michigan is working with the Michigan Departments of
Agriculture and Rural Development and Community Health to determine
whether multiple local illnesses may be linked to the consumption of
unlabeled, unpasteurized apple cider.

Shiga toxin-producing _E. coli_ (STEC) [also called enterohemorrhagic
_E. coli_ - EHEC] bacteria have been detected in stool samples from
several Antrim County residents who developed severe intestinal
illness and diarrhea during the past 2 weeks. Samples have also been
collected to determine whether these cases may be linked to
unpasteurized apple cider that was produced locally by an unlicensed
facility and without the warning labels required by law for
unpasteurized products.

According to Joshua Meyerson, MD, Medical Director for the Health
Department of Northwest Michigan, apple cider, whether pasteurized or
unpasteurized, should be obtained only from licensed facilities or
vendors.

"Shiga toxin-producing _E. coli_ comes from eating foods contaminated
with traces of human or animal feces," Meyerson explained. "This is
sometimes associated with under-cooked meat, produce, and
unpasteurized cider or dairy goods produced without the necessary
safeguards to prevent contamination."

Meyerson adds that anyone experiencing abdominal pain and worsening or
bloody diarrhea, especially those who may have recently consumed
unpasteurized apple cider from an unknown or unlicensed source, should
contact a physician. "Symptoms usually appear within 3 to 10 days
following exposure," he said. "Young children and the elderly face
greater risk of severe complications."

- --
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail <[email protected]>

[The information suggesting that the unpasteurized apple cider is the
vehicle for the cases of enterohemorrhagic _E. coli_ is not stated,
but this circumstance has been reported in the past. Two events need
to happen for this to occur: 1st, the apples need to be harvested from
the ground (after falling from the tree) from a field contaminated
with animal feces; and 2nd, the cider produced from the contaminated
apples needs to not be pasteurized. - Mod.LL

A HealthMap/ProMED-mail map can be accessed at:
<http://healthmap.org/r/1nDW>.]
 
I press my own cider (well, I take my apples to a guy who presses them for me while I jug it) and I refuse to put any apples in the cider that I wouldn't eat as-is. Everyone raves about my cider and how good it is.

But enough bragging.

I saw on The Chew (its often on in the lunchroom at work) that the show's cast suggested using bruised and split apples for cider. That is the worst thing you can do. Crap in, crap out.

A lot of places don't wash the apples really well and you get insects, dirt, and grass in if you are lucky, and bird **** if you aren't.
 
It is very unprofessional of a scientific organisation to say cider when they mean juice, even though I know cider means juice in the USA. very imprecise language bound to cause confusion. E-coli won't survive the fermentation procedure so this article has no relevance to hard cider. If you don't graze animals under your trees it also doesn't have relevance.
Did you know wine grapes are never, ever washed? They get covered with insects and bird****.
 
"...and that making hard cider will NOT magically sanitize the juice somehow because it has alcohol in it. If your sweet cider is contaminated, your hard cider will be too."

if worried about e coli, bottle pasteurizing should kill anything leftover
 
To my knowledge e.coli poisoning has never happened from hard cider, nor is e.coli a cause of off flavors. You don't need to pasteurise hard cider to make it safe, the notion is ridiculous. What is the attribution for your quote? This is a whole beat-up and folks shouldn't start worrying that their hard cider will poison them (except for the ethanol). Juice is a different matter.
 
My point in posting this wasn't to cause some freak out about e. coli. Don't eat poop, poop covered objects, or eat raw chicken and you're 99% safe. It was simply to point out that there are a lot of unscrupulous places selling crappy ciders.

Classic example of how "natural" does not equal "safe".
 
Although I never tried, I bet you could use apples from the ground and quickly press them. Then hit it with Kmeta and I'm pretty sure that'll kill whatever lives in the juice.
 
gcastrat said:
Although I never tried, I bet you could use apples from the ground and quickly press them. Then hit it with Kmeta and I'm pretty sure that'll kill whatever lives in the juice.
Click to expand...

The issue isn't your juice. It's the bucket, the press, your hands, the counter top, your clothes, everything you accidentally touched and didn't realize it, the door knob, your shoes. You become a walking disease spreading machine waiting to poison your family.

It survives for months on non porous surfaces.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/6/130
 
In England and France most of the cider is made from apples shaken to the ground with shaking machines, and swept up with sweepers. I am talking many millions of litres of cider from apples harvested off the ground. (they do put the apples through a bath to rinse the mud off).
E.coli doesn't survive in hard cider.
 
hellpatrol said:
"...and that making hard cider will NOT magically sanitize the juice somehow because it has alcohol in it. If your sweet cider is contaminated, your hard cider will be too."

if worried about e coli, bottle pasteurizing should kill anything leftover
Click to expand...

I think it has less to do with "magic" and more to do with the alcohol tolerance of the e-coli bacteria. Any biology grads here to help us with that? I seem to remember my toxicology professor talking about e-coli being somewhat of a fragile bacteria.
 
Ecoli WILL make you piss blood out your ass, feel like your guts are being ripped out & make you weak; and that's on a GOOD day. It can also KILL you. Ever had food poisoning? Ecoli is about 10 times worse. When it comes to Ecoli, I subscribe to the "If in doubt, don't" theory. If there's a serious concern about whether my juice/cider is or could be tainted/infected with Ecoli, I'll dump it & toss the carbouy in the dumpster. Then I'll proceed to sterilize or toss everything it came in contact with. Right or wrong, wasteful or not, I don't care; I don't screw around with Ecoli.
Regards, GF.
 
gratus fermentatio said:
Ecoli WILL make you piss blood out your ass, feel like your guts are being ripped out & make you weak; and that's on a GOOD day. It can also KILL you. Ever had food poisoning? Ecoli is about 10 times worse. When it comes to Ecoli, I subscribe to the "If in doubt, don't" theory. If there's a serious concern about whether my juice/cider is or could be tainted/infected with Ecoli, I'll dump it & toss the carbouy in the dumpster. Then I'll proceed to sterilize or toss everything it came in contact with. Right or wrong, wasteful or not, I don't care; I don't screw around with Ecoli.
Regards, GF.
Click to expand...

Yea, Ecoli can be lethal, but it's much more common than you would think. Hell, it's a common bacteria found in the Rio Grande river (where Albuquerque gets some of it's drinking water) and a very popular lake that I frequent here locally. When I swim in that water, I probably swallow at least a few ounces of water by accident, and I have yet to get Ecoli poisoning. Hell, i'd be willing to bet that a sample of water from your local public pool would test positive for Ecoli. And how many people to you think accidentally ingest some of the water? If I had a batch of contaminated cider, simply boiling it and dealing with a cloudy cider while also sterilizing my equipment with bleach would be the route I would take. And some would STILL consider that over-kill.

Ecoli is still just a bacteria, not a prion. It can be killed relatively easily, and your body has defenses against it. It surrounds us and is found EVERYWHERE.
 
Alcohol tolerance of E. coli is about 3.5% abv.

http://openwetware.org/wiki/CH391L/S12/MetabolicEngineering

"can only tolerate 35g/L of ethanlon". 35g/L equals 35ml/L. 1000ml in 1L, so that comes out to 3.5% ethanol ABV.

I don't know anyone making cider below 4% ABV, and most of us go up to around 5-7 percent. Even if 3.5% is just the LD50, I think we're going to be just fine.

Put the incinerator away, you don't have to torch and toss everything it came in contact with.
 
hellpatrol said:
"...and that making hard cider will NOT magically sanitize the juice somehow because it has alcohol in it. If your sweet cider is contaminated, your hard cider will be too."

if worried about e coli, bottle pasteurizing should kill anything leftover
Click to expand...

There is no known pathogen harmful to humans that can survive a fermented environment.
 
Weren't people making hard cider for thousands of years before we even knew what e-coli was?

My sparkling cider definitely beats the 3.5% mark, so I'm not worried.

I tried some UV pasteurized and unpasteurized from the orchard I got my cider from. The unpasteurized was head and shoulders above the pasteurized. Tasted clear, fresher, sweeter. Both were made with the same blend of apples as well.


Pasteurization itself (at least mandatory pasteurization) has always been a controversial issue, though it has mostly pertained to milk in the past. The proponents of pasteurization say that everything should be pasteurized to kill any potential pathogens. Those opposed often argue that the process also kills many, beneficial microorganisms.

Keep your equipment clean, your alcohol content above 3.5%, and buy from a reputable source, and you really shouldn't have to worry about e-coli at all.
 
highgravitybacon said:
The issue isn't your juice. It's the bucket, the press, your hands, the counter top, your clothes, everything you accidentally touched and didn't realize it, the door knob, your shoes. You become a walking disease spreading machine waiting to poison your family.

It survives for months on non porous surfaces.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/6/130
Click to expand...

Uh huh... right.. if you ever wind up with any of this tainted juice that happens to have %ABV.. just send it my way and I'll run a set of "medical tests".
 
^ I second that. And as for throwing away carboys, please send them my way. I'll pay for shipping plus 10 bucks for the inconvenience of shipping them rather than tossing them in the dumpster.

I aint scared! Even if I didn't have tiger blood. ;)
 
Many folks get scared of the natural world, they imagine the soil full of harmful germs, and any food that touches the soil must be contaminated. This isn't true at all, there is a population of microbes eating each other and keeping the whole thing in balance, the soil won't make you sick. Amazingly enough, most food is grown in the soil and is perfectly safe to eat. Sure, be cautious about contact with cow manure, but most farmers don't have cows or other stock in their orchards. There isn't any proof in that first article that apple juice is causing illness, just a suspicion that because it isn't pasteurised or certified it isn't safe.
 
Guys, relax. While this is all relevant for plain juice/cider, this is irrelevant for fermented cider. You should know that ALL cider off the press will likely have e.coli as well as a host of other bugs in it. Pasteurizing is mandatory on unfermented cider (and milk) to kill the bad bacteria. Fermentation does the same thing. The history of human civilization (Pre-Pasteur) relied on fermentation for this reason. There is no NEED to pasteurizes the cider before fermenting. There is no need to worry about e.coli. You are currently breathing in e.coli. Don't be such a germ freak. They are our friends.
 
And what do they do when we try to kill them with antibiotics because of our irrational fear of them? Mutate into super bugs that can't be treated or killed once it's in us. Kinda like mother nature flipping humanity the bird, eh?
 
gregbathurst said:
If you don't graze animals under your trees it also doesn't have relevance.
Did you know wine grapes are never, ever washed? They get covered with insects and bird****.
Click to expand...

Um....I own two cows (small ranch in the Hill Country, that's enough for the ag exemption). Trust me when I say that grazing your own animals under a tree doesn't even come close to accounting for the number of critters peeing and pooping under/on/in that tree. There's deer, raccoons, rabbits, foxes, and depending on where you are maybe moose or elk as well. Deer thrive on what grows on the trees here in Texas (mesquite and Texas persimmon in particular) and they eat a lot of what those trees produce each year.

I can't say I lay awake at night worrying about the potential effect of deer spit on my Texas persimmon wine, but I most certainly did wash them well and yes, I use Campden tablets on any whole fruit.

And I don't know about wineries where you are, but the ones I've been to do wash their grapes and separate out all the bits of ground stuff. Can't say about the bird s***. Hm. Wonder if that's what corks wines...? :D
 
levifunk said:
There is no known pathogen harmful to humans that can survive a fermented environment.
Click to expand...
Hmm, interesting. If you have a reputable source for that information I would like to see it. Not trying to be rude, I'm genuinely curious.

It also occurs to me that a nasty could produce toxins during the fermentation which could make you sick, even if the organism that produced them is dead by the end of the fermentation. I question how likely this is though, owing to the difference in conditions between a fermentor and a human body.

I'll tag both questions for future research, though if anyone has sources they'd like to send me I'd love to take a look at the relevant data.

That being said, I always bottle pasteurize my cider. That probably has more to do with me being paranoid then anything else though.
 
Leadgolem said:
I question how likely this is though, owing to the difference in conditions between a fermentor and a human body.
Click to expand...

It's funny that most toxins bacteria make ain't even toxic themselves, but become toxic after being processed by the liver. Wish I could cite some that are specifically made by micro-organisms (should have taken better notes in my toxicology class), but something like methanol isn't toxic until it is processed through the liver and turned into formaldehyde (powerfully toxic to the optic nerve). Same happens with acetaminophen (Tylenol). Not toxic till it's processed!

Unless there is a HUGE culture of a bacteria like e.coli or tetanus, I'm very doubtful that they could produce enough toxins before fermentation killed them to be harmful.

Remember though, the dose makes the poison! Even water is toxic at the right dosage. Hell, we all know that ethanol is a toxin! :drunk:
 
CodyA said:
Unless there is a HUGE culture of a bacteria like e.coli or tetanus, I'm very doubtful that they could produce enough toxins before fermentation killed them to be harmful.
Click to expand...
That was another question mark in my head. If the bacteria would have the time to produce enough toxin to make it a concern.
CodyA said:
Remember though, the dose makes the poison! Even water is toxic at the right dosage. Hell, we all know that ethanol is a toxin! :drunk:
Click to expand...
Yes it is, a tasty tasty toxin. :tank:
 
I think you would literally need a dog to leave a log in your gallon batch of cider for a few days to get a culture that big, and even then, maybe. Then there's the taste issue though....
 
springmom said:
And I don't know about wineries where you are, but the ones I've been to do wash their grapes and separate out all the bits of ground stuff. Can't say about the bird s***. Hm. Wonder if that's what corks wines...? :D
Click to expand...

You visited a winery and they told you they wash the grapes? I have worked at a winery for years. I can guarantee that at no winery in Australia or France are the grapes ever washed. I can't speak for the USA but to add that extra step sounds like financial suicide, as well as diluting the wine because you can't just dry out a bunch of grapes. If they are washing their winegrapes they don't know much about winemaking.
 
I'm not saying don't wash your apples. Obviously you want to remove as much dirt and crap (pesticides?) that is on the apple. I'm just saying, after fermentation, there is no way you are going to get sick from the cider and there is no NEED to pasteurize (or add chemicals) for the sole purpose of killing e. coli.
 
If they just would have pitched some yeast there wouldn't have been any problems. What chumps.
 
That article concerns a proprietary grape washing system, they are trying to convince the wine industry to start washing grapes (after 10 000 years). Good luck to them.
 
highgravitybacon said:
The issue isn't your juice. It's the bucket, the press, your hands, the counter top, your clothes, everything you accidentally touched and didn't realize it, the door knob, your shoes. You become a walking disease spreading machine waiting to poison your family.

It survives for months on non porous surfaces.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/6/130
Click to expand...

So you're saying I should stop scratching my athletes foot before I make cider?
 
CodyA said:
Naw, I usually just spit in my juice or wort first thing when I wake up in the morning, cross my fingers, and hope for the best. ;)
Click to expand...
You know, I think the most disturbing thing is that would probably work.
 
Leadgolem said:
You know, I think the most disturbing thing is that would probably work.
Click to expand...

There's a hell of alot more candida yeast in saliva than any other pathogen... I mean, there's actually a drink from Argentina (I believe... I could by mistaken by the country of origin) where fermentation is started by female workers spitting in it. Woman spit only though... I think their saliva is more pure or something.
 
I'm really not surprised with the weather this year that folks would be grabbing whatever apples they had to make cider regardless of whether it was groundfall or not.

My question is. Will standard pasteurization kill it off? I'm not planning to ferment anything this year with cider, but if I were to. Would taking it up to temp be sufficient?
 
Enough temp will kill anything! Cept prions (think Mad Cow)... Those suckers are like zombie diseases. Nothing kills them!

Although, I would assume you would rather not boil the cider and set the pectins. In that case, I would say that if it's good enough for the FDA to approve it for human consumption, it would have to be good enough to at least kill e. coli. In other words, if lower heat pasteurization is good enough for all the big cider and juice manufacturers to get away with, should be perfectly safe.
 
Williams Brewing 300

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