The importance to public health of producing and keeping clean animals on farms was stressed yesterday at a conference on food safety and nutrition.
Dr Declan Bolton of Teagasc's Ashtown Food Research Centre said E.coli 0157 had been found in cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, wild birds and, in one case, a pet dog that carried a virulent strain of the pathogen.
Delivering his paper on risk management on the farm and in the abattoir, Dr Bolton said despite the investment of resources, no one could claim that pathogens had been successfully controlled.
The conference in Dublin was organised by Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority.
Dr Bolton said that from a food safety perspective, producing farm animals which were food units in an environment that had faecal material containing E.coli O157 was unacceptable.
While cooking meat was the ultimate control of what has become known as the "burger bug", every stage of the production of food was important.
While there was a plethora of regulations which could control the spread of the bug, the production of clean animals on farms would have the most impact on its spread.
"I draw an analogy about urban society in the 19th century when there was an open sewer system. People threw their faecal material out on the street," he said.
"If people did that nowadays in Ireland, the general response would be one of disgust. Yet we seem to accept the production of animals which are food units in environments where they are living in their own excrement."
He said the production of cattle in a clean environment would mean the input of very large amounts of straw once a day and there was an economic cost. Slatted sheds, even when hosed down once a day, were still contaminated.
"It is nigh impossible to remove a hide from an animal or fleece from a sheep that has faecal contamination without having some faecal contamination of the carcase and international studies will confirm this."
Dr Bolton said the first step should be the acceptance of a problem based on science and economics and research should be carried out to see what can be done. Infected water was the most common source of infection and thought to be responsible for the current outbreak of E.coli 0157 in Limerick.
Sinéad McCarthy of the Insititute of European Food Studies at Trinity College said a recent North-South food consumption survey found the population's weight, height and body mass index had nearly doubled since last measured in 1990. Obesity had nearly doubled with an increase from 10.8 per cent to 17.8 per cent of the population.