Fecal Contamination of Sushi

Remember that 24-hour flu you had last year? Well, there is no such thing as a 24-hour or 48-hour flu. There is no such thing as stomach flu. What you had is likely food poisoning. When someone gets hepatitis from eating a strawberry, the hepatitis didn’t come from the strawberry; they don’t even have little livers. As Dr. McDougall likes to point out, when is the last time we heard of someone getting Dutch elm disease, or a bad case of aphids?

Food poisoning comes from animals. Specifically, animal feces, and that manure runoff can contaminate sprout seeds, spinach, and other healthy plant foods. Still, that’s better than eating the manure directly. Animal products, particularly fish and poultry, can be covered in fecal bacteria. It’s so bad that while the federal government recommends that we wash our fruits and veggies, we’re not even supposed to rinse meat and poultry, for fear of the viral and bacterial splatter. Chicken carcasses are so covered in fecal matter that researchers at the University of Arizona found more fecal bacteria in the kitchen—on sponges, dish towels, and sink drains—than they found swabbing the toilet. Even after bleaching everything twice, in a meat-eater’s house, it is safer to lick the rim of the toilet seat than the kitchen countertop, because people aren’t preparing chickens in their toilets.

Frankly, you know that chicken juice isn’t juice; it’s raw fecal soup. And in terms of fish hygiene, researchers swabbed sushi for fecal bacteria. The national food standards guidelines for maximum fecal bacteria on ready-to-eat food items is 30,000. This is what they found. They also swabbed vegetarian sushi—avocado and cucumber rolls—and found zero fecal bacteria. Unlike salmon and tuna, avocado and cucumbers don’t have rectums.

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by veganmontreal.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

• Rusin P, Orosz-Coughlin P, Gerba C. Reduction of faecal coliform, coliform and heterotrophic plate count bacteria in the household kitchen and bathroom by disinfection with hypochlorite cleaners. J Appl Microbiol. 1998 Nov;85(5):819-28.
• Atanassova V, Reich F, Klein G. Microbiological quality of sushi from sushi bars and retailers. J Food Prot. 2008 Apr;71(4):860-4.

Image thanks to htomren via Flickr.

• avocados
• chicken
• cucumbers
• Dr. John McDougall
• fecal contamination
• fish
• food poisoning
• foodborne illness
• hepatitis
• liver health
• poultry
• safety limits
• salmon
• seafood
• sushi
• tuna
• USDA