STEC Beef Safety

The goal of the STEC CAP grant is to reduce the occurrence and public health risks from eight targeted serogroups/serotypes of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC-8 ) in beef using a quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) platform. This U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) Coordinated... Agricultural Project (CAP) grant, titled Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC) in the Beef Chain: Assessing and Mitigating the Risk by Translational Science, Education and Outreach, seeks to significantly advance evidence- and action-based beef food safety knowledge to protect public health. This project is targeting the seven most important STEC serotypes that cause human illness in the U.S. The three Core Pillars of this project are pre-harvest, post-harvest and consumer research, and all three of these initiatives feed directly into the framework of our project, that being a Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA) across the beef chain continuum. The QMRA is the STEC CAP's centerpiece and is what drives all research, education and extension activities. This USDA-NIFA grant focusing on STEC in beef was awarded to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and includes 15 participating institutions and 51 collaborators. Additionally, wide representation from the beef production and processing industry, beef industry technology providers, wholesale/retail/food service sector, academic and regulatory experts, and consumer advocacy organizations are involved as research and education contributors or technical advisors as members of our Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) and/or Stakeholder Advisory Board (SAB). This grand effort to understand and control STEC throughout the beef system is a public-private partnership designed to generate advanced scientific understanding of STEC and to utilize this knowledge throughout the entire beef production to consumption continuum. Information included on this website details more specifically the defined goals and ...Read More