The Iowa Stater
November 2000
Team takes a shine to E. coli
After a 1993 E. coli outbreak in the Pacific Northwest, the USDA developed new sanitation requirements for slaughterhouses, including stiffer inspections for fecal contamination and tests for E. coli. (Feces are a major source of bacterial contamination in livestock and poultry slaughter-houses.) However, until recently, most inspection was done visually.A new method, developed by researchers at Iowa State and the USDA Agricultural Research Service, takes the guesswork out of visual inspections. It's based on visible light fluorescent spectroscopy, which causes contaminants to glow green.
The new method earned the researchers one of R&D Magazine's prestigious R&D 100 Awards for technologies of 1999. Iowa State has received 22 R&D awards since 1984, second only to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the number of awards.