… has recently allowed meat companies to add viruses to their meat to keep it from making people sick. The cocktail of six viruses is sprayed on ready-to-eat meat before it is packaged to protect against Listeria monocytogenes. This bacterium causes about 2500 cases of severe food poisoning and 500 deaths a year in the US alone. The viruses in the additive are bacteriophages, and are safe for humans, in fact some kinds of viral bacteriophage naturally inhabit the human digestive tract.
(Etats-Unis, Packaging Digest, 08/2006)