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In the France Mr. Noussitou remembers, pre-packaged ground beef did not exist. Rather, he says, patrons would point out a cut of beef and the butcher would grind it right before their eyes. But times are changing. Last summer, France was subject to a highly publicized E. coli outbreak that hospitalized seven children. The guilty party turned out to be frozen hamburger patties.

Even in the U.S., one of the last bastions of the medium-rare burger, tainted beef fears have increasingly prompted Canadian-style meat-searing advisories. “I believe I should be able to treat my hamburger like food, not like infectious f—ing medical waste,” U.S. food writer Anthony Bourdain wrote in response in his 2010 book Medium Raw. “Is it too much to feel that it should be a basic right that one can cook and eat a hamburger without fear? To stand proud in my backyard … grilling a nice medium-rare f—ing hamburger for my kid-without worrying that maybe I’m feeding her a s— sandwich?”

Last summer, North Carolina became the latest state to ban any piece of ground beef cooked to less than 155 degrees Fahrenheit (68.3 degrees Celsius). Similar laws were already on the books in South Carolina and Wyoming, although South Carolinians can order a medium-rare patty if they are over the age of 18.

A resident of Raleigh, N.C., Steven Elliot responded by founding RareBurger.com, a website listing the state’s few remaining rare burger purveyors. “It’s much like a speakeasy; you give a wink and a nod and you get what you want,” said Mr. Elliot. Patrons can also slyly tell the cook they want their burger to “moo.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Elliot’s list is short, as he routinely gets calls from lawyers demanding that their restaurant clients be taken off the list. “If I order the highest-quality meat possible, I should be able to order it medium rare … I’m not going to eat garbage meat,” he said. “What’s worse for you? A four-ounce, fresh ground burger prepared for you medium-rare, or a giant heart attack hamburger from McDonald’s?”

“I don’t need them to be my mother and tell me what I can and cannot eat,” said Mr. Elliot.

National Post

thopper@nationalpost.com

What about other raw foods? {"origin_id":"147382","mime_type":"image/jpeg","created_on":"2012-03-03T01:29:02.000Z","url":"http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/oyster1.jpg","title":"Oyster","width":"158","height":"179","shortcode":"[caption id=\"attachment_147382\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"158\" caption=\"NP files\"] [/caption]","type":"image","channels":["desktop","tablet","phone"]}A medium-rare burger carries an equal or lesser risk of food-borne illness than raw oysters or steak tartare, two foods that do not receive nearly the amount of scrutiny given to hamburgers. The reason, says Health Canada, is because hamburger makes up a much larger part of the Canadian food system. “Ground beef is a larger part of the Canadian diet than raw fish or oysters,” said Dr. Kirsten Mattison, a Health Canada microbiologist. Medium rare or even rare steaks also dodge scrutiny, but that is because an intact cut of meat is much less susceptible to E. coli infection. Spawned in the stomach and intestines of a cow, E.coli gets spread to steaks, ribs and roasts as a result of cross-contamination at the slaughterhouse. By searing the outside of the meat for no more than three to four minutes, the E. coli is effectively eliminated. With ground beef, the surface E. coli is mashed into the inside of a patty, where it can evade all but the most thorough grilling. Knowing whether a cut of meat is clean enough to be safely turned into ground beef is ultimately a matter of trust, said Dr. Mattison. “When you eat [a medium rare burger] in a restaurant, you’re really trusting that the restaurant has done a good job of trimming off any potentially contaminated bits and using very clean utensils and haven’t introduced any contamination,” said Dr. Mattison. “We would never say that you could reduce the risk enough.” {"origin_id":"147384","mime_type":"image/jpeg","created_on":"2012-03-03T01:45:30.000Z","url":"http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/burger-cc.jpg","title":"Burger","width":"158","height":"124","shortcode":"[caption id=\"attachment_147384\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"158\" caption=\"Tyler Anderson/National Post\"] [/caption]","type":"image","channels":["desktop","tablet","phone"]}According to Robert Belcham, proprietor of Refuel Restaurant, Canada’s obsession with well-done burgers overshadows the larger issue of an increasingly tainted meat system. “It makes no f—ing sense to me, would you eat something else that was poison until you heated it to 170 degrees [Fahrenheit]?” he said, noting that on the streets of Tokyo, diners can order the unthinkable dish of chicken sashimi; raw chicken. The reason, he says, is the quality of the meat. “You know that chicken lived on a small farm, was given the best grains and the best pasturing land, and that’s why it’s no problem to eat chicken sashimi in Tokyo,” he said. Tristin Hopper, National Post