The New York Times followed up on the chicken study and how to tell if it’s done that I wrote about last week with a meandering story about color, texture, and stupidly recommends using pop-up thermometers.
Me and the U.S. Department of Agriculture and many others have been saying the same thing for over 20 years: Use a fucking tip-sensitive digital thermometer.
That is all.
As Jimmy Buffett said on his 1978 Live album, sometimes I’m real sentimental, and sometimes I’m real trashy.
I can relate.
How many times can the UK Food Standards-thingy say cook poultry until piping hot, while Canada, the U.S. and now even Australia – apparently the most monarch-frenzied country in the world according to early-morning talk-fests – say, use a fucking thermometer.
Stick it in and use a fucking thermometer.
And now, research from the U.S. says that changes in lighting conditions to promote energy conservation may induce folks to eat undercooked turkey, please, pay homage to my late, great food safety pioneer Pete Snyder (and pardon my Minnesotan, but am married to one and she swears like a drunken sailor, after living with me for 13 years) and use a fucking thermometer.
Changes in Lighting Source Can Produce Inaccurate Assessment of Visual Poultry Doneness and Induce Consumers To Eat Undercooked Ground Turkey Patties
Journal of Food Protection, March 2019, Volume 82, Number 3, pages 528-534, https://doi.org/10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-18-392
Curtis Maughan, Edgar Chamber IV, et al
https://jfoodprotection.org/doi/full/10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-18-392
Undercooked poultry is a potential source of foodborne pathogens, such as Salmonella and Campylobacter. The best way to avoid eating undercooked poultry is to use a food thermometer during cooking. However, consumers who cook poultry often use visual appearance for determining doneness, which relies on extrinsic factors, including lighting conditions. Because the United States recently mandated changes in lighting to promote energy conservation, this study evaluated the effect of lighting sources on consumer perceptions of doneness and willingness to eat cooked poultry patties. Consumers (n = 104) evaluated validated photographs of turkey patties cooked to different end point temperatures (57 to 79°C) and rated the level of perceived doneness and willingness to eat each sample. Evaluations were conducted under different lighting sources: incandescent (60 W, soft white), halogen (43 W, soft white), compact fluorescent lamp (13 W, soft white), light-emitting diode (LED; 10.5 W, soft white), and daylight LED (14 W). Lighting changed perception of doneness and willingness to eat the patties, with some of the energy-efficient options, such as LED and halogen making samples appear more done than they actually were, increasing the willingness to eat undercooked samples. This poses a risk of consuming meat that could contain bacteria not killed by heat treatment. Recent changes in lighting regulations can affect lighting in homes that affects perceptions of poultry doneness, requiring that educators place extra emphasis on the message that properly using a meat thermometer is the only way to ensure meat is cooked to a safe end point temperature.
I blame celebrity cooking shows like MasterChef for the stupid things people do in their kitchens.
Raw egg aioli and mayo is bad enough, and leads to monthly outbreaks of Salmonella across Australia, but to decide that color is a reliable indicator of safety in chicken is stupid beyond belief.
Forget piping hot, forget color, get a thermometer.
I know food safety is 1% of the food discussion, while food porn is the other 99%, but this is just bad advice.
Our job is to provide people with evidence-based info and let them decide.
These people are preaching like a Baptist church.
According to Jamie Downham of The Sun, celebrity chef John, 55, revealed the pink uncooked flesh – which can deliver a devastating dose of salmonella – gagging: “Oh. Can’t eat that.”
Gregg and John were not impressed by Ottilie’s uncooked chicken
Undercooked chicken is often rife with foodborne illnesses that can leave people throwing up and confined to their beds for up to a week.
Viewers quickly dubbed the dish “chicken a la salmonella”, with John telling marketing manager Ottilie: “I think you’ve got to know when to stop. It’s all over the place.”
No where did the story mention using a fucking thermometer to ensure safety.
And these people are making meals for your kids, and they have no clue.
I love this paper.
The research is cool, but to me it culminates 16 years of Chapman becoming a better researcher.
I had a hand in the idea for the paper, but Chapman and his team did all the work.
I edited some stuf.
I was reminded last night of all the youthful energy me, and Chapman and Blaine and Lisa and Brae and Katie and Sarah and the reintroduced Carol – had when we did the bulk of our creative work.
Sorta like the Stones 68-72.
And yet that was the most turmoil in my life, as I went through a painful divorce, separation from kids, an interesting girlfriend and finally meeting Amy a few years later.
My line is graduate students should be able to bail their supervisor out of jail or drive me to the airport when (I) threatened with arrest.
Sorta like the Stones 68-72.
This is Chapman’s moment to shine, and although barfblog.com was named the number 1 food safety blog by someone pushing something today, it don’t matter much.
Often Chapman and I will send an e-mail to each other about some obscure reference in a post, with the comment, we only write for each other.
And the over 75,000 direct subscribers in over 70 countries.
Well done Chapman et al., couldn’t be prouder.
You too Blaine.
Assessment of risk communication about undercooked hamburgers by restaurant servers
Ellen M. Thomas, RTI International; Andrew Binder, Anne McLaughlin, Lee-Ann Jaykus, Dana Hanson, and Benjamin Chapman, North Carolina State University; and Doug Powell, powellfoodsafety.com
Journal of Food Protection
DOI: 10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-16-065
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration 2013 Model Food Code, it is the duty of a food establishment to disclose and remind consumers of risk when ordering undercooked food such as ground beef. The purpose of this study was to explore actual risk communication activities of food establishment servers. Secret shoppers visited restaurants (n=265) in seven geographic locations across the U.S., ordered medium rare burgers, and collected and coded risk information from chain and independent restaurant menus and from server responses. The majority of servers reported an unreliable method of doneness (77%) or other incorrect information (66%) related to burger doneness and safety. These results indicate major gaps in server knowledge and risk communication, and the current risk communication language in the Model Food Code does not sufficiently fill these gaps. Furthermore, should servers even be acting as risk communicators? There are numerous challenges associated with this practice including high turnover rates, limited education, and the high stress environment based on pleasing a customer. If it is determined that servers should be risk communicators, food establishment staff should be adequately equipped with consumer advisory messages that are accurate, audience-appropriate, and delivered in a professional manner so as to help their customers make more informed food safety decisions.
Don’t burger up your bank holiday.
Get it? Don’t bugger it up? Burger it up?
Those bureaucrats at UK’s Food Standards Agency are really yukking it up, focused on stupid jokes rather than evidence-based communications.
FSA has long been in its own undersirable class when talking about food safety risks, and class is so very important to the Brits.
FSA is great is talking at people rather than talking with people (a huge difference, like educating versus providing information).
FSA’s idea of risk communication is to commission a meaningless survey – people lie, especially about food and drink – which found that despite 71% of people stating that they are concerned about food poisoning, over a third (36%) of Brits would eat a burger that isn’t fully cooked through. More than one in 10 said that they actually prefer burgers cooked this way. When cooking them at home 81% of those admit to undercooking them. So we at the FSA are encouraging all those who are getting their barbecues out this weekend to ensure they cook their burgers all the way through – until steaming hot throughout, there’s no pink meat in the middle and the juices run clear.
Those scientifically meanginless terms – steaming hot, no pink – have featured prominently in FSA foodsafetytalk for years, with steaming hot replacing piping hot.
Lead FSA policy thingy said something that is not worth repeating because it ignores the risks associated with needle-tenderized steaks.
And we’ve been over this so many times before.
The BBC repeated the advice verbatium in its latest version of PR blowjobs rather than something resembling journalism.
Use a thermometer and stick it in.
And now this.
The proprietors of Cork burger restaurant ‘Son of a Bun’ have said that they are ‘devastated’ by the temporary closure order served upon the business last week.
The order follows a HSE investigation into an outbreak of E. coli in the city, which has identified eight cases in adults to date. The HSE said all affected are currently well.
“A Cork food business has been identified as a common link between the cases,” the HSE confirmed yesterday.
Son of a Bun owners Niall and Amanda O’Regan said it was an issue in relation to “structural issues” with the premises.
However in a statement the couple also revealed that “four staff have tested positive to carrying bacteria linked with E .coli”.
The closure order was served last Wednesday, June 29 and the restaurant was shut over the weekend.
While a notice on the door of the premises cited “necessary construction works” as the cause of the closure, it did not make any reference to the closure order.
However the restaurant yesterday issued a statement confirming it had received the closure order.
“Following a complaint, Son of A Bun restaurant has been working with the FSAI to ensure the integrity and quality of food safety at the premises in Cork,” the statement read.
When it opened last October, the owners said Son of a Bun was “the only restaurant approved by the HSE to serve burgers cooked pink”.
However a spokesperson for the HSE yesterday said that it does not award approval to restaurants wishing to serve rare or medium-rare burgers.
And did the bureautypes say that back in Oct.? Did they say anything during subsequent inspections?
Son of a Bun opened last September and has proven a huge hit with burger fans in Cork. It became well-known for its ‘pink burgers’, served rare and medium rare at customers’ requests.
It is understood that Son of a Bun will no longer serve the ‘pink’ burgers when the MacCurtain St restaurant reopens.
Color is irrelevant. Use a thermometer and stick it in.
Two weeks after the state made its food inspections public, we’re digging deeper into the information posted online. The data is public, but the number of inspections and other figures are not simply listed.
All restaurants in Hawaii, the type of safety inspection it received, even the ingredients used in a meal that may have made a customer sick are included in the state’s new website.
“They want an explanation of why we saw certain things and why we did or did not do an action based on that,” said Peter Oshiro with the State Department of Health.
KHON2 spent days digging deeper, and found out DOH inspectors have checked out more than 4,800 locations across the state. They did 10,270 inspections, and have handed out more than 1,800 yellow or red placards.
The state is still in the process of entering more data, and told us Tuesday that 25 percent of food establishments received a yellow (conditional) card or red (closed) card.
“Is that a high number?” KHON2 asked.
“That’s a relative thing. I think what this shows is that 75 percent of establishments right now are fully compliant with rules and regulations,” Oshiro said. “Twenty-five percent yellow cards, we would like to see that down to 15 percent or below.”
To help, the state offers free food safety classes. It’s becoming increasingly popular since the introduction of the health department’s color-coded placard system.
Starting with the 20 on-site inspections completed laws week, Contra Costa’’s Environmental Health Department is now giving the 4,000-some restaurants, grocery stores, delis, conveniencemarts and gas station heat-lamp operations physical placards showing whether that establishment fully passes (green) or is on “conditional” status (yellow).
If major problems like vermin infestations, lack of hot water or improper storage temperatures result in an order to close, such establishments can be assigned a red placard until the problems are solved.
For Contra Costa Environmental Health Department Director Marilyn Underwood, it’s largely a matter of consistency. Alameda County, with the exception of the city of Berkeley, has since July 2012 used a color-coded placard system much like the one Contra Costa has adopted with green (pass), yellow (conditional pass) and red (closed) given to the county’s 6,000 restaurants, grocery stores and other places food is sold.
In 2014, Santa Clara County adopted a similar system showing inspection results for its 8,000 vendors. The only Bay Area county that doesn’t do this or something similar, Underwood said, is San Francisco.
“People here live in one area and commute to other areas, and we wanted a consistent look to what people see,” she said.
Also, having a vendor’s rating posted publicly should encourage them to clean up their acts, literally, and may result in more clients reporting problems they see.
To see more about the Contra Costa placard program, go to http://cchealth.org/eh/retail-food/placard.php
More information on the Alameda County program is available at www.acgov.org/aceh/food/grading.htm
Details on Santa Clara County’s placard program can be found at www.sccgov.org/sites/cpd/programs/fsp/Pages/Placarding.aspx
According to the CSUF Food Facility Inspection Reports, conducted by the Department of Risk Management and Environmental Health & Safety, Inspector Justine Baldacci carried out the Feb. 24 inspection three days after students lodged complaints.
Baldacci also performed the Gastronome’s last inspection on July 28, 2015. The dining facility received a score of 95. The department scheduled a reinspection date for Nov. 20, 2015. However, no inspection report for November was filed on the CSUF Risk Management and Environmental Health & Safety website.
The most recent inspection report states that Baldacci inspected the facility following a report of allegedly undercooked chicken served to a customer.
The inspection found that “the processes, procedures and record keeping for batch cooking were reviewed with management and found to be adequate.”
The incident that caused the complaint took place Sunday, Feb. 21, when students said the chicken they were served for dinner was undercooked.
Elana Stein, 18, posted a picture of the chicken she said was undercooked on the Gastronome’s Facebook page and sent a complaint with the pictures of the alleged raw chicken to Rhonda Robinson, manager of the Gastronome.
Color is a lousy indicator of safety. Use a thermometer and stick it in.
Food safety friend Michéle writes:
As part of my daily public health mission, I track foodborne outbreaks and teach food safety. I do the latter to try to reduce the former. Anywhere, anytime, anyway I can introduce it into conversation. Because everyone should be served safe food.
Recently, on a rare night out, I was trying to order a hamburger from a small regional restaurant.
The conversation progressed like this:
Waiter: Do you want that burger with ‘some pink’ or ‘no pink?’
Me: Can you tell me what temperature equals ‘some pink’?
Waiter: We don’t cook to a temperature. We cook to ‘some pink’ or ‘no pink’.
Me: Color is not an indicator of doneness. Please ask the chef to cook my burger to 155 degrees F.
Waiter: Our burgers have no dyes. We can only do ‘some pink’ or ‘no pink’.
As a food safety professional, I was concerned with this. As I mentioned to the waiter, “some pink or no pink” is not an indicator of doneness. Numerous meat chemistry factors play a role in influencing color and can result in premature browning, which is why color is not a reliable indicator.
So I reached out to the restaurant’s customer service representative via Twitter and email, asking about their beef procedures. Ever the educator, I even provided resources for them to review, in case it proved helpful to their response. www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/ehsnet/plain_language/restaurants-ground-beef-handling-cooking.pdf
To their credit, the company seemed happy to respond and explain their hamburger handling processes, and I received a reply from their “Chief Strategy Officer.” Unfortunately their explanation of safe meat handling was NOT correct, and definitely NOT food safe:
From their email:
“The dangers in ground beef have to do with the grinding process, the potential contamination comes from the exterior of the animal. Steak is safe to eat raw because it is only the interior of the animal and it does not get ground up with any exterior parts of the animal. The bacteria cannot pass into the internal flesh unless it is ground in. We grind in house so there is no surface coming in contact with our beef.”
The email goes on to explain:
“We don’t sell our hamburgers based on temperature because we hand-form our burgers and therefore they have different internal temperatures throughout the patty as there are different thicknesses. We cook our burgers based on time, less time for a pink and more time for no pink. The terms do somewhat relate to the color but are more ways to describe less cooked and more cooked.”
Ouch! That’s scary. Shouldn’t their cook terms be related to a number of degrees, not a hue of red?
Unfortunately, they are not alone. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that many restaurants prepare and cook beef in ways that could lead to undercooking, and that about one-in-10 restaurant hamburgers are undercooked. Their recommendations are that establishments should measure the final temperature of ground beef using a thermometer or using standard cooking methods that always cook ground beef to 155°F for 15 second to prevent foodborne illness. FDA agrees.
Beef, even beef ground on-site, it not without risk. E. coli normally lives in the intestines of animals and the infectious dose is very low. (According to BugCounter Don Schaffner dose response models for pathogenic E. coli indicate even a single cell holds the probability of causing illness.) E. coli on the outside of a hunk of beef such as chuck, roast or steak can be mixed into the middle of a burger – the place that takes the longest to reach 155 degrees F and become safe. Irradiation or cold pasteurization can reduce risk, but other food safety assurance steps must also be in place.
In the company’s discussion of their hamburger handling process, there is no mention of cross-contamination controls. Sanitation. Active managerial oversight. Strict supplier control. Microbial testing and certificates of analysis. Handwashing?
They did, however assure me that “The FDA does allow for the sale of rare meat so long as you print warning about potential foodborne illness on your menu which we have.”
True. But advisories and Disclaimers don’t make for a safer food product. Or negate an establishment’s responsibility to take the numerical temperature of food.
Color is a lousy indicator. Make safe food. Stick it in. Use a thermometer.
