Raw beef is not considered safe to eat. It can carry bacteria, parasites, and other pathogens that are only reliably destroyed by cooking to the proper internal temperature. That said, the actual level of risk depends heavily on the type of cut, how it was handled, and who’s eating it.
Why Raw Beef Is Risky
The major bacterial threats in raw beef include Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, Campylobacter, Listeria, and Staphylococcus aureus. Some of these cause a few days of digestive misery. Others can be genuinely dangerous. E. coli O157:H7, for example, produces toxins that can cause bloody diarrhea and a serious kidney condition called hemolytic uremic syndrome. Salmonella infections can become systemic and life-threatening in some cases.
Beyond bacteria, raw beef can also transmit parasites. The beef tapeworm (Taenia saginata) uses cattle as an intermediate host and humans as the final host. In regions where raw or undercooked beef is commonly eaten, tapeworm infection rates are strikingly high. In parts of Ethiopia, where raw beef dishes are traditional, self-reported tapeworm rates range from 45% to 64% in some communities. The risk is far lower in countries with strong meat inspection systems, but it isn’t zero.
Ground Beef vs. Steak: A Critical Difference
Not all raw beef carries the same risk. On a whole muscle cut like a steak, bacteria tend to live only on the outer surface. That’s why searing the outside of a steak to a high temperature is generally enough to kill any pathogens present, even if the center stays pink or rare. The USDA recommends cooking steaks, roasts, and chops to an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C) with a three-minute rest, but many people eat steak rarer than this with relatively low rates of illness.
Ground beef is a completely different situation. When meat is ground, any bacteria that were sitting on the surface get mixed throughout the entire batch. A pathogen that would have been killed by a quick sear on a steak is now buried in the center of your burger. This is why ground beef should reach an internal temperature of 160°F (71°C), and why eating raw ground beef is significantly more dangerous than eating a rare steak. The USDA makes no exception here: raw store-bought ground beef should never be eaten without thorough cooking.
What About Steak Tartare and Other Raw Dishes?
Dishes like steak tartare, carpaccio, and kitfo (Ethiopian raw beef) have long culinary traditions. They aren’t magically safe, but they follow practices that reduce (without eliminating) risk. Tartare is typically made from a whole muscle cut that the chef trims and hand-chops just before serving, rather than from pre-ground beef. The meat is kept as cold as possible throughout preparation, since cold temperatures slow bacterial growth. Some preparations involve cutting the beef over a bowl of ice.
Freshness matters enormously. The longer raw beef sits, the more time bacteria have to multiply. Restaurants that serve tartare typically source high-quality cuts from trusted suppliers and use them the same day. If you’re considering making a raw beef dish at home, starting with a whole cut and doing the chopping yourself is far safer than using anything pre-ground from the grocery store. Even then, you’re accepting some degree of risk that cooking would eliminate.
Who Should Never Eat Raw Beef
The FDA explicitly advises certain groups to avoid all raw and undercooked meat. These include pregnant women (and by extension their unborn babies), children younger than five, older adults, and anyone with a weakened immune system. That last category covers people with cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, organ transplants, and autoimmune diseases. For these groups, even a mild foodborne infection can escalate quickly into something serious.
Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in Retail Beef
A study of U.S. retail ground beef found that roughly 46% of conventionally raised samples carried tetracycline-resistant E. coli, compared to about 34% of beef labeled “raised without antibiotics.” Erythromycin-resistant bacteria showed a similar pattern, appearing in 48% of conventional samples versus 37.5% of antibiotic-free samples. Salmonella was detected in about 1.2% of all samples tested. These numbers reflect contamination levels in raw product, and they underscore why cooking ground beef thoroughly matters: if you do get sick from a resistant strain, the infection can be harder to treat.
How to Minimize Risk If You Choose to Eat It
If you decide to eat beef rare or raw, a few choices meaningfully reduce your risk:
- Choose whole cuts over ground. A rare steak is dramatically safer than raw ground beef because bacteria stay on the surface of intact muscle.
- Buy the freshest meat possible. Use it the same day, and keep it refrigerated or on ice until the moment you prepare it.
- Do your own cutting. For tartare or similar dishes, buy a whole cut and chop it yourself rather than relying on pre-ground meat that has passed through commercial grinding equipment.
- Sear the surface. Even for rare preparations, briefly searing the outside of a cut kills surface bacteria while leaving the interior raw or nearly raw.
- Know your risk category. If you’re pregnant, very young, elderly, or immunocompromised, the potential consequences of a foodborne infection are severe enough that raw beef simply isn’t worth it.
Cooking beef to the recommended internal temperatures remains the only way to reliably eliminate bacterial and parasitic contamination. Everything short of that is a calculated risk, and the size of that risk depends on the choices you make before the first bite.