E. coli O157:H7 is a well-known danger in the food industry and food safety advocates have encouraged regulations against the pathogen, but other E. coli strains are left out of the adulterant list. The Safe Tables Our Priority organization wants six other E. coli strains, which can also cause illness or death in consumers, to be equally regulated.

At noon Thursday, STOP is hosting a protest outside the U.S. Department of Agriculture to discuss the lack of progress by the government in defining the other strands as adulterants, a substance that lessens the purity or effectiveness of a substance.

“Currently, the USDA only names the O157 strain as an adulterant and only when it is in ground beef," said STOP Executive Director Donna Rosenbaum, who became involved with food safety efforts after her daughter’s best friend died from O157:H7.

“We believe all six E. coli strains (O26, O111, O103, O121, O45 and O145) should be considered an adulterant and in all beef.”

Adding the other strains to an adulterant list does not require legislation, she said, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service just needs to aadd them to a list and determine, through administrative codes and a required wait time period, how to regulate them.

E. coli O157:H7 was declared an adulterant in ground beef in 1994, shortly after the Jack and the Box outbreak that sickened more than 700 people and killed four on the west coast, including Rosenbaum’s daughter’s friend.

Harmful E. coli strains, such as O157:H7, produce a toxin called Shiga toxin, which is responsible for causing disease. The bacteria that produce the Shiga toxins are called “Shiga toxin-producing” E. coli, or STEC.

The six E. coli strains are often called “non-O157H7 STEC”, and are less likely to cause illness in people; however, some of the strains can still produce severe manifestations of STEC illness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified the other Serogroups that most often cause illness in the United States as: O26, O111 and O103. Additional strains include: O121, O45, and O145.

“If an unadulterated E. coli strain is found in a sample of beef products in the U.S. it isn’t required anyone do anything about it,” Rosenbaum said. “They are monitoring the strains in humans so they can be provided with medical treatment, but no one is held accountable if the strain reaches the food supply.”

The government doesn’t have the authority to issue mandatory recalls on any products, a change suggested in the Food Safety Modernization Act, which has been sitting in Congress since March 2009, but consumers do have the right to hold a producer who sells O157 contaminated beef accountable by suing them. With other E. coli strains, consumers who have become ill or lost a loved one don’t have that option, Rosenbaum said.

“Some people have kids who have died and they don’t even know what it was that killed them because a lot of times they will test for O157 but not any other strain,” she said.

STOP member Dana Boner is traveling to Washington D.C. on behalf of her daughter who died at age 14 from E. coli O111. Kayla Boner fell ill in October 2007 and suffered from kidney failure, seizures and went brain dead before she was taken off life support.

In addition to proposing the six E. coli strains be added to the adulterated list, STOP is pushing guidelines outlined in the Food Safety Modernization Act that would expand the existing control of O157:H7 to non-ground beef, with a special focus on school lunch programs, and develop better ways to trace outbreaks, according to a press release.

STOP’s Congressional letter campaign to support the modernization act can be found, here: Safe Tables Our Priority.