It’s obviously true that the risk from rare burgers is higher than the risk from rare steak. It’s obviously nonsense that the absolute risk from rare burgers to healthy adults is high enough to be worth worrying about.
I disagree with the assertion that this is obvious nonsense. There’s an empirical question about the likely incidence of food poisoning from different cooking methods… so I have dug for a little evidence on the matter. I found a modelling study [1].
Short version: their model predicts well done burgers causing food poisoning around 8 in 100,000 servings compared to rare burgers causing food poisoning around 19 times in 100,000 servings. Those numbers do seem low.
NB: Your mileage may vary, especially from country to country. The Berriman et al report is UK-focused, and food poisoning incidences vary between countries. Naïve numbers say the USA has ~10× the incidence of the UK, though fact checkers caution heavily against making international comparisons on that basis [2].
This story [3] pulls together UK modelling showing ~180 deaths per year from food poisoning vs. CDC data showing ~2600 deaths per year in the USA, around 14× more deaths for a population that’s only ~5× the size. So maybe the USA has a food poisoning burden something like 3× that of the UK?
Oh, and that Full Fact story [2] mentions an estimate of 1 million people in the UK getting food poisoning each year. Combined with the estimate in [3] of 180 deaths p.a., that seems like a case fatality rate of the order 18⁄100,000. So (making a huge assumption about whether burger poisoning is approximately as deadly as other types of food poisoning), if we multiply the 11 extra cases per 100,000 (from switching from well done to rare) by 18⁄100,000, we get 0.00198 additional deaths per 100,000 servings, or ~1 additional per 50 million servings.
[1] Berriman, A.D.C., Kosmider, R.D. and Snary, E.L. (2014) Risk to human health from consumption of VTEC O157 in beef burgers.
It’s obviously true that the risk from rare burgers is higher than the risk from rare steak. It’s obviously nonsense that the absolute risk from rare burgers to healthy adults is high enough to be worth worrying about.
I disagree with the assertion that this is obvious nonsense. There’s an empirical question about the likely incidence of food poisoning from different cooking methods… so I have dug for a little evidence on the matter. I found a modelling study [1].
Short version: their model predicts well done burgers causing food poisoning around 8 in 100,000 servings compared to rare burgers causing food poisoning around 19 times in 100,000 servings. Those numbers do seem low.
NB: Your mileage may vary, especially from country to country. The Berriman et al report is UK-focused, and food poisoning incidences vary between countries. Naïve numbers say the USA has ~10× the incidence of the UK, though fact checkers caution heavily against making international comparisons on that basis [2].
This story [3] pulls together UK modelling showing ~180 deaths per year from food poisoning vs. CDC data showing ~2600 deaths per year in the USA, around 14× more deaths for a population that’s only ~5× the size. So maybe the USA has a food poisoning burden something like 3× that of the UK?
Oh, and that Full Fact story [2] mentions an estimate of 1 million people in the UK getting food poisoning each year. Combined with the estimate in [3] of 180 deaths p.a., that seems like a case fatality rate of the order 18⁄100,000. So (making a huge assumption about whether burger poisoning is approximately as deadly as other types of food poisoning), if we multiply the 11 extra cases per 100,000 (from switching from well done to rare) by 18⁄100,000, we get 0.00198 additional deaths per 100,000 servings, or ~1 additional per 50 million servings.
[1] Berriman, A.D.C., Kosmider, R.D. and Snary, E.L. (2014) Risk to human health from consumption of VTEC O157 in beef burgers.
https://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/media/document/FSA%20Summary%20Report%20v4_0.pdf
[2] https://fullfact.org/health/food-poisoning-US-UK/
[3] https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2020/07/research-shows-estimated-180-deaths-per-year-in-uk-because-of-foodborne-illness/