[HN Gopher] Chicken Checker - See how often salmonella was found...
___________________________________________________________________
Chicken Checker - See how often salmonella was found at meat
processing plants
Author : danso
Score : 121 points
Date : 2021-11-01 16:43 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (projects.propublica.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (projects.propublica.org)
| carvking wrote:
| Have you taken your salmonella vaccine yet ?
| bob229 wrote:
| Animal agriculture is pure evil
| whaas wrote:
| Impressive tool. Supply-chain transparency is a must-have (and
| very doable).
| altrus wrote:
| TLDR; If you're looking to reduce the risk of contamination,
| consider purchasing whole chickens or, at least, skin-on, bone-
| in, cuts.
|
| This is because the risk is substantially higher if you purchase
| skinless or deboned chicken - most contamination is on the
| surface of the chicken, and is easily killed during cooking.
|
| However, during processing, the tooling used to debone or deskin
| the chicken may get contaminated, and necessarily pierces the
| flesh of the meat. This tooling isn't usually disinfected between
| chickens (cost prohibitive). As a result, if one of the birds has
| surface contamination, this contamination will remain on the
| outside of the instrument, grow, and subsequently infect the
| inside of all the other birds.
|
| This is important, because direct heat is actually pretty good at
| killing bacteria. However, if the bacteria are able to penetrate
| to the inside of the chicken, there's a substantially greater
| likelihood that the temperature (and duration) on the inside of
| the chicken are insufficient to kill disease causing bacteria.
|
| Note: The overall idea is to recognize that surface bacterial
| contamination can be killed with sufficient temperature over a
| sufficient duration of time, recognizing that the lowest overall
| temperature will be in the thickest part of the meat, and
| ensuring that there isn't a mechanical mechanism that will
| introduce contamination in that area.
| nemetroid wrote:
| In Sweden, one single case of salmonella was found in 2020 (when
| sampling before slaughter). All animals in the population it came
| from were killed and destroyed, and none of them made it to food
| stores.
|
| The same stringency is applied to egg production.
|
| https://svenskfagel.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/arsrapport...
| uhtred wrote:
| That's fucking tragic. Imagine killing an entire population of
| humans because some of them were sick. Sadly most people will
| read that and just think "what a waste of good food". In 500
| years humans will be absolutely disgusted by the way we behaved
| towards other animals in current times.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| I agree that it's sad. But just wait until you find out what
| happened to all the _other_ chickens...
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| The real problem is not in detection or distribution. It is in
| the production methods. Here in Norway chickens are raised in
| batches and the sheds are cleaned between batches, see
| https://www.matprat.no/artikler/matproduksjon/hvordan-
| lever-.... But in the US it seems that chickens are raised in
| continuous production facilities where chicks go in one end and
| grown chickens come out the other. This method pretty much
| guarantees that infections can spread.
|
| Perhaps someone in possession of the details can conform,
| clarify, or correct.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| This stuff isn't effectively regulated in the US, so the
| answer to "Which part of the process is broken?" is "yes".
|
| Chicken raising is problematic, as is the slaughterhouse
| environment where they are processed.
| mrVentures wrote:
| Never a bad time to go vegan.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Sadly even vegetables aren't safe.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/us/onions-salmonella-outb...
| malfist wrote:
| Fair, but chicken having salmonella is so common it's not
| news. Veggies having salmonella is so uncommon it is news.
|
| There's a big difference between the FDA limit of 15% of
| chicken being contaminated with salmonella (with the average
| from this article looking to be around 5%), and the once or
| twice a year events where more than 0% of a veggie is
| contaminated and it makes the news.
| Symmetry wrote:
| I have no intention of going vegan but the conditions in
| chicken factories are horrific and I've cut chicken entirely
| out of my diet.
| schleck8 wrote:
| Or at least switch to organic animal products.
|
| It's funny how factory farming is suddenly an issue when a
| human might end up in hospital. I hope those who didn't care
| before get to see battery cages or fledgling shredder in person
| at some point.
| asiachick wrote:
| You can just sick from vegetables too. In fact, as much as I
| think I should eat more of them it's frustrating how I have to
| check for rot and other similar things far more often then I do
| with processed foods.
|
| I know when I make something with fruit or vegetables I'll go
| through, rip off all the black or dark parts, throw out any
| rot. Often if I see rot I'll throw out the entire batch. (one
| bad apple....)
|
| And then, I have to force myself not to think about how people
| making salads for me (ie, at a restaurant) are far less
| vigilant.
| phonypc wrote:
| As a rule, foodborne pathogens are invisible. And odourless.
|
| Those rotten bits on your vegetables are probably perfectly
| safe to eat, if unpalatable. It might not even involve
| microbial spoilage at all, just enzymatic breakdown.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Or buy your meat locally and get pasture raised animals, which
| actually is a carbon REDUCING activity.
|
| Unlike quite a bit of industrial farming including growing most
| vegan staples.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > Or buy your meat locally and get pasture raised animals,
| which actually is a carbon REDUCING activity.
|
| Are you sure?
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/13/746576239/is.
| ..
|
| "A number of past studies have found lower greenhouse gas
| emissions associated with the feedlot system. One reason is
| that grass-fed cows gain weight more slowly, so they produce
| more methane (mostly in the form of belches) over their
| longer lifespans."
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
|
| "'Eating local' is a recommendation you hear often - even
| from prominent sources, including the United Nations. While
| it might make sense intuitively - after all, transport does
| lead to emissions - it is one of the most misguided pieces of
| advice. Eating locally would only have a significant impact
| if transport was responsible for a large share of food's
| final carbon footprint. For most foods, this is not the case.
| GHG emissions from transportation make up a very small amount
| of the emissions from food and what you eat is far more
| important than where your food traveled from."
|
| > Unlike quite a bit of industrial farming including growing
| most vegan staples.
|
| Like what?
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
|
| "Many of the foods people assume to come by air are actually
| transported by boat - avocados and almonds are prime
| examples. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to
| the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO2eq in transport
| emissions. This is only around 8% of avocados' total
| footprint. Even when shipped at great distances, its
| emissions are much less than locally-produced animal
| products."
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| To present more of the picture here:
|
| "Paige Stanley, a researcher at the University of
| California, Berkeley, says many of these studies have
| prioritized efficiency -- high-energy feed, smaller land
| footprint -- as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
| The larger the animal and the shorter its life, the lower
| its footprint. But she adds, "We're learning that there are
| other dimensions: soil health, carbon and landscape health.
| Separating them is doing us a disservice." She and other
| researchers are trying to figure out how to incorporate
| those factors into an LCA analysis.
|
| Stanley co-authored a recent LCA study, led by Jason
| Rowntree of Michigan State University, that found carbon-
| trapping benefits of the grass-fed approach. Another recent
| LCA study, of Georgia's holistically managed White Oak
| Pastures, found that the 3,200-acre farm stored enough
| carbon in its grasses to offset not only all of the methane
| emissions from its grass-fed cattle, but also much of the
| farm's total emissions. (The latter study was funded by
| General Mills.)"
|
| That's from your first link (npr dot org). Seems like the
| jury's still out on this one.
| seanwilson wrote:
| Is this a realistic alternative to factory farmed cows
| though? How expensive would it be? Would there be enough
| land? Would it produce enough beef? Could that land be
| used in a better way (e.g. forests, other crops)?
|
| 77% of global farm land is used by livestock already
| (https://ourworldindata.org/land-use) and is a leading
| cause of deforestation.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Generally pasture land in the US at least doesn't get
| enough rainfall to be used as farmland without extensive
| irrigation, which isn't practical today given strains on
| aquifers. I don't think the US could maintain its beef
| habit entirely on what we can raise on pastures but I
| think we ought to be eating less meat anyways.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| I get my beef from a local (pasture-raised, 100% grass-
| fed) farm and it costs about 10% more than the organic
| beef I see at the meat counter at Whole Foods (a grocery
| store).
|
| Can't comment on if those prices would change with scale.
| I don't know if it's more or fewer head of cattle per
| acre compared to the maize needed for feedlot cattle.
| Maize is a pretty dense crop, so my guess would be fewer
| head per acre.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Cattle is not treated like chickens. Beef cattle in the
| U.S. generally grazes on pastureland - most U.S. beef is
| already "free range", whereas dairy cows are mostly
| raised indoors. Only 10% of U.S. cattle are dairy cows.
|
| Many cows go to fattening up centers before they are
| slaughtered, but the cattle don't spend their lives in
| them. In these centers many are fed corn -- so-called
| "grain finished" non-organic beef. This is the main
| difference between the feelgood beef and normal beef. The
| U.S. has ~120M acres devoted to pasture for ~80 million
| heads of cattle, about 1.5 acres per animal. This is land
| not fit for farming, so rather than saying we set aside
| 77% of global "farm" land for cattle, it's more accurate
| to say that without cattle converting grass to protein,
| 77% of the land devoted to food production would be
| abandoned. Of course you can argue it should be a
| wilderness -- millions of buffalo roamed on that
| grassland in the past.
|
| There are an additional 10 million dairy cows living in
| conditions ranging from nice farm animals to horrific
| factory lots.
|
| Saying that cattle is a "leading cause" of deforestation
| is misleading. Cattle graze on low productive land,
| usually more arid plains like in the Western U.S. (what
| was once called the Great American desert). You do not
| see large herds of cows wandering on farmland. You do see
| lots of cattle in the dry plains of Argentina.
|
| What you mean is that a primary source of deforestation
| in the Amazon rain forest is the practice of slash and
| burn agriculture, which consists of setting fires that
| nourish the soil in lieu of fertilizer. This productive
| soil lasts about 18 months and then you need to set fire
| to more forest. Slash and burn was a pre-industrial
| farming technique widely practiced by Amazonian natives,
| but does not scale well in industrial application. Better
| to spend money on fertilizer and leave the rainforest
| alone.
|
| It's true that after the 18 months (or so), the land is
| not productive farmland anymore but is still suitable for
| cattle. However you might as well say that the growing of
| vegetables is a leading cause of deforestation, since the
| would-be farmers are after the wood from the forest as
| well as the ~1.5 years of cash crops before the ground is
| only fit for cattle. Pastureland is not a good money
| maker, requiring so much land per animal. The rents
| obtained in this way are minimal.
| seanwilson wrote:
| Is it realistic you could feed the world like this
| though? "If we combine pastures used for grazing with
| land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock
| accounts for 77% of global farming land."
| (https://ourworldindata.org/land-use) It's not really an
| alternative if it isn't practical.
| [deleted]
| Aromasin wrote:
| If you can buy locally sourced, pasture fed meat, then why
| can't you get locally sourced, permaculture grown vegan
| staples? Of those two option, I've yet to find a single
| credible scientific study saying that the plant based option
| of those two isn't superior.
|
| You're also presenting pastureland as a viable option when
| there are tenfold superior ways which we could use that
| pastureland for almost every climate when it comes to carbon
| sequestration. 80%+ of deforestation world wide driven by the
| animal agriculture and the desire to create grazing land for
| cattle, and growing crops to feed said cattle[1].
|
| Additionally, the idea of a slurry pits near my home, running
| off into local water supplies and ground water, and fumes
| affecting peoples respiration[2], do not seem like a sensible
| alternatives to a permaculture food forest.
|
| I live in the UK where unlike most countries, our cattle are
| largely pasture fed as the norm. Half of farmland (which
| makes up about 70% of the UK), mostly uplands and pasture,
| produces just 20% of the UK's food [3]. We could re-wild most
| of that if only people moved away from eating meat; including
| local, pasture raised alternatives.
|
| [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02409-7
| [2]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/14/muck-
| spr... [3]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/31
| /convert-...
| theabsurdman wrote:
| "Bad news: Eating local, organic won't shrink your carbon
| footprint" https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/local-organic-
| carbon-footpri...
| powersnail wrote:
| I always treat chicken as if it's covered with bacteria. Separate
| board, separate knife, hand washing with soap between handling,
| and cooking it all the way through. All items that touched the
| chicken goes immediately into the dish washer after use.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| yeah, totally. chicken is nuclear material / lava in my
| kitchen. i do all the same and i empty the sink before handling
| the meat in it. i also hand wash all chicken contaminated
| dishes in the sink.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Don't modern dish washers do a better job at sanitizes dish
| than hand washing?
| dmoy wrote:
| Yes
|
| A lot of it comes down to higher temperatures in the
| dishwasher
| atkailash wrote:
| Not GP but I think the also referred to pre-washing before
| hitting the dishwasher?
|
| But that might just be because that's what I do
| Symmetry wrote:
| I remember getting lectured on this back when little-ish me
| worked as a short order cook. And to never store chicken on top
| of beef in the freezer.
| kiddico wrote:
| what's the reason for chicken/beef ordering?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The outer packaging is often contaminated, and can
| contaminate the beef packaging. Bacteria survive in the
| freezer.
|
| Beef, except for pre-ground beef, is generally much safer
| than poultry.
| ska wrote:
| Anything above has the risk of dripping onto whatever is
| below (even if you are careful). Chicken has higher
| incidence of bacteria growth, spoils faster.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Ditto here (chicken).
|
| And ditto for beef.
|
| And ditto for pork.
|
| And ditto for lamb/mutton.
|
| And I generally buy "cook long & slow" cuts, so there is no "my
| thermometer said the spot I tested was hot enough..." FUD.
| uhtred wrote:
| Just eat tofu.
| hangonhn wrote:
| Wow. I'm really glad you stated that publicly because I do the
| same and always felt a little weird/extreme for how I handle
| chicken. I nearly always do the chicken handling last and then
| sanitize everything with disinfectant afterwards including
| large areas of the countertop. The frequency of outbreaks
| related to chicken has made me very careful when dealing with
| chicken.
| MisterTea wrote:
| I too handle chicken like its covered in hydrofluoric acid
| mixed with methyl mercury.
| atkailash wrote:
| I've worn gloves when cooking it at home. But I also treat all
| meat this way (except the gloves, that stays with chicken). I
| also don't put washed veggies on the same thing unwashed ones
| have been on. Basically anything you buy at the store seems
| like it's had some sort of outbreak of something at one point,
| so I just treat everything as contaminated at first.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Do you not hand wash while cooking raw beef?
| powersnail wrote:
| Less rigorously than when I'm handling chicken. Every time I
| touch chicken, I immediately go to the sink and start a 20
| second hand washing routine. The risk is at an entirely
| different level.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Why do you continue to eat this food if you have to
| mentally accept that it's this dangerous to eat? This would
| drain me considerably if I had to do this routine for
| eating peppers and broccoli.
| op00to wrote:
| You realize vegetables have shit on them, and can cross
| contaminate too?
| thehappypm wrote:
| I mean, there was just a huge recently an outbreak of
| salmonella from onions. Every food has some risk of being
| contaminated or spoiled. I assume you wash your broccoli
| and peppers, right?
| LegitShady wrote:
| I wonder how salmonella from onions works - it's pretty
| standard to always peel the onions so is the salmonella
| on the surface and your knife carries it through the
| onion or is the salmonella in the onion already?
| robocat wrote:
| "whole, fresh onions imported from the State of
| Chihuahua", "Do not use, ship, or sell recalled onions.
| Suppliers and distributors that re-package raw onions
| should use extra vigilance in cleaning any surfaces and
| storage areas that may have come into contact with these
| products. If there has been potential cross contamination
| or mixing of onions from other sources with these
| products, suppliers and distributors should discard all
| comingled and potentially cross-contaminated product." --
| https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-
| illness/outbrea...
|
| "It's not clear exactly how many people have been
| infected--the 808 number is a bare minimum. "The true
| number of sick people in an outbreak is likely much
| higher than the number reported," the CDC said, since
| many people may have chosen to ride out the sickness at
| home rather than seek medical care. The CDC estimates
| that only about one in every 30 salmonella cases actually
| get reported." -- https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasre
| imann/2021/10/29/salm...
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Yes definitely, I wash all my foods before eating. But I
| don't associate any kind of serious risk to most of the
| foods that I eat.
| uhtred wrote:
| Rinsing vegetables is not the same as keeping them away
| from everything else in the kitchen and then vigorously
| sanitizing everything they touched.
| thehappypm wrote:
| It's on the same spectrum, though.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Just like taking a bath is on the same spectrum as
| scrubbing your skin with bleach
| powersnail wrote:
| I guess I just love cooking. I love making all kinds of
| food. And some food I prepare are significantly more
| complicated than handwashing and keeping separate boards
| and utensils.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| I respect that. Do what you love to do then ;)
| azinman2 wrote:
| It's not dangerous to eat if you cook it. I do this with
| all meat / fish. That it's being called out for chicken
| versus other things surprises me.
| dmoy wrote:
| Chicken has far and away the highest % of salmonella
| contamination of any common food.
|
| It's something like 5% of chicken you buy at the grocery
| store.
| earth_walker wrote:
| Which says something about the conditions in which they
| are kept.
| afavour wrote:
| Ironic you mention peppers because I take similar
| precautions when cooking with hot peppers, if any ends up
| on my fingers and I do something as simple as rub my eye
| I'm in got a bad time.
|
| Yet I still do it, because it tastes good. I imagine OP's
| reasons are similar.
| uhtred wrote:
| But you are risking an irritated eye from chili peppers,
| not salmonella!
| munchbunny wrote:
| It's not that onerous if you've gotten used to staging
| your food handling. You just prep everything else, handle
| the chicken, set aside in a dedicated bowl, then wash
| your hands and go back to handling everything else.
|
| Once I'm cooking, I just use a dedicated pair of steel
| tongs for moving chicken around, then I don't have to
| keep washing my hands, I just clean that set of utensils
| once I have a moment.
|
| I think it's still worth the effort, it's just some
| specific food handling practices. After all, it's not
| like I don't practice the same caution when I'm handling
| any meat, and even for any other meat I'd have to wash my
| hands when moving from handling meat to veggies.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| Not OP, but I treat chicken with a similar level of
| caution. I continue preparing and eating it because I
| like chicken and have several chicken-based dishes that I
| enjoy preparing. That said, it is draining, and it has
| made me buy and prepare raw chicken less often since I
| started being really careful about the prep procedure.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| It's not dangerous to eat cooked, you just have to be
| careful with it raw.
| [deleted]
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's not dangerous to eat, it's risky if not prepared
| properly.
|
| Similarly you need to be very careful with vegetables
| like scallions, some leafy greens, etc. Many people
| assume that they don't need to wash bagged spinach, for
| example.
| Meph504 wrote:
| I generally find propublica makes really interesting lookups with
| the worse method for searching, why would you not offer zip code
| search, or by state. Instead I have to know the city name or the
| P-code.
|
| Just always feels like a missed opportunity to provide actual
| meaningful data.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Except you can search by state?
|
| Just type in the state abbreviation.
| gruez wrote:
| It sort of makes sense though. The data is available at a plant
| level, but you can't necessarily tie a particular zip code to a
| particular processing plant, since supply chain/availability
| changes.
| specialp wrote:
| One should presume that all chicken has dangerous bacterial
| infections since most of them do [1]. Cook all chicken to 170 no
| matter what.
|
| [1]
| https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/consumer-...
| phonypc wrote:
| Overkill. Most health agencies recommend 165deg, and that's
| already got a big margin of safety on it. I aim for 150deg
| these days, and even that's mostly because I like the texture
| there. 140deg is perfectly safe if you can hold it there for a
| while, like if you're doing sous vide.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Yep. The FDA recommended temperatures are very conservative
| and reflect something like the temperature at which almost
| all dangerous pathogens would be killed nearly
| instantaneously. Holding for a minute at 155F, or even 140F
| for a long while (easy to do with sous vide), has the same
| pasteurizing effect and is perfectly safe, while not totally
| ruining the texture+ as cooking to 170F would do.
|
| Serious Eats has a great explanation. "Food safety is a
| function of both temperature and time."
| https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-complete-guide-
| to-s... + (personally, I find 140F chicken
| breast a bit weird, though)
| jimmaswell wrote:
| For me the chicken comes out chewy and spongy if I don't
| cook it to 170 or so. I started having a chicken breast for
| almost every meal recently and I had to keep increasing the
| cook time to find the right doneness, and at that doneness
| it will read 170 or even a lot more in spots. 425 for 32
| minutes for one ~10oz breast for reference.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| Developing an understanding of the time/temp relationship
| in cooking and food safety really revolutionized the way
| that I think about cooking and safety. Instead of a fear-
| based binary cooked/raw framework, I can reason about how
| long I need to hold an ingredient and a particular
| temperature to obtain both the texture I want and the level
| of food safety I need. It's made me a lot more relaxed
| about cooking.
| Scramblejams wrote:
| Agreed, 140F chicken is weird. I did a bunch of test runs
| with my sous vide and my personal magic temp for chicken is
| 147F for an hour. Works great for dark and light meat.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Second vote for sous vide for chicken, absolutely the
| juiciest chicken I've ever had.
|
| One warning to a first-timer though is if you're used to
| baked or grilled chicken the texture of sous vide is going to
| _feel_ undercooked. One or two bites though and you get used
| to it because of how good it is.
| Retric wrote:
| The point of safety margins is the risk reward ratio is
| heavily weighted in one direction. 150 is flat out not worth
| the risk from a public health standpoint.
|
| Sous vide is nowhere near as safe as many assume. Many spores
| and some pathogens can survive the process and people with
| compromised immune systems should seriously avoid eating such
| food especially if it's been refrigerated before consumption.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >150 is flat out not worth the risk from a public health
| standpoint.
|
| Im not sure what this means. What is the risk-reward being
| evaluated to see if it is worth it?
| phonypc wrote:
| > _150 is flat out not worth the risk from a public health
| standpoint._
|
| It's not worth the risk for public health agencies to
| _recommend_ 150deg, that I can agree on. Too much room for
| inexperienced cooks to make an error.
|
| But chicken held at 150deg for a few minutes (which is hard
| to avoid in most scenarios) is no less safe than the
| hypothetical "165deg for an instant" scenario.
| Retric wrote:
| The problem is not just with the cook, how accurate is
| your equipment? +/- 4f is likely good enough at 165. +/-
| 4f at 150 or much worse 130 can be a serious issue.
|
| Now it's not big deal what you do in your own kitchen,
| but people recommending such practices to a wide audience
| have real responsibility.
| zionic wrote:
| I use my pellet smoker @200F for an hour, then crank to 350F
| to "finish" them up to an internal 155F.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Cooking chicken to 170 F is a good way to to be safe and also
| ensure nobody enjoys your chicken. There are various
| temperatures depending on the cut that are safe.
|
| If you can check your chicken to know that it is 170 then you
| have a thermometer to check it at other temperatures. If you
| have a sous vide machine you can go even lower, you just have
| to increase the time.
|
| https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-s...
|
| https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-take-meat-temperature-the...
| powersnail wrote:
| > also ensure nobody enjoys your chicken
|
| That's an overstatement. Plenty of dishes cooks chicken all
| the way to well-done and the result is still delicious.
|
| For instance, chicken adobo let the chicken sit in a
| simmering pot for nearly an hour, and it's absolutely
| delicious.
| hypersoar wrote:
| There's a big difference between cooking dark meat and
| white meat. Thighs and drumsticks can easily go higher and
| still be good, or even better. But breasts lack the fat and
| connective tissue that breaks down in longer cooks, so
| they're a lot less forgiving.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Cooking thighs / legs to less than 185 generally results
| in poor texture.
| Scramblejams wrote:
| I'm happy with chicken thighs below that, but I pulled a
| turkey out at 165F internal temp once and it felt
| disturbingly underdone. Some of it was still pink. Safe,
| but not very enjoyable.
| rackjack wrote:
| I personally wouldn't feel safe eating pink turkey.
| Scramblejams wrote:
| Heh yeah, it was weird. We were all fine, but it was
| weird. A good reminder that appearance is an unreliable
| indicator of safety, even if in this case the appearance
| was a false positive.
| specialp wrote:
| The articles you link refer to cooking in a sous vide which
| most people are not. So yes you could kill enough bacteria to
| be safe following that article if you kept it at 150 deg for
| 2.8 minutes but with standard cooking that is not easy to
| measure or maintain. That is why the guideline is 170 instant
| read because the pasteurization time at that temp is 0.
| bagacrap wrote:
| I don't find it hard since I leave a thermometer inside the
| chicken breast while it's roasting.
| phonypc wrote:
| > _if you kept it at 150 deg for 2.8 minutes but with
| standard cooking that is not easy to measure or maintain_
|
| It's actually surprisingly hard _not to_ do that. Unless
| you 're cooking at unusually low pan/oven temperatures, the
| internal temperature of a chicken breast taken off at
| 150deg will probably hit 155deg or higher over the next
| couple minutes.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| (provided that parts of the meat closer to the cooking
| surface are > 155o when taken off)
| asiachick wrote:
| And yet here in Japan lots of restaurants serve raw chicken.
| It's very similar in taste and texture to certain types of raw
| fish.
| eddanger wrote:
| We often fear salmonella in meat but our blindspot is often
| salmonella in salad and veggies. Be careful out there!
| https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/outbreaks-active.html
| eneumann wrote:
| I had no idea there were that many salmonella infections in the
| US every year. Could irradiation be a solution? I know it is
| sometimes used on fruits and vegetables (wish it was used more,
| tbh).
| ssklash wrote:
| Take a look at how chickens/farmed animals in general are
| housed before before being "processed". Turns out it's cheaper
| to pump the animals full of antibiotics and wash the resulting
| meat with chemicals afterwards than to house them in clean and
| sanitary conditions. The EU/UK at least recognize how terrible
| this is, so they don't allow US meat that is handled this way.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| chickens are not allowed antibiotics by law. That's the funny
| part of "our chicken is raised without antibiotics"
| advertising.
| xsmasher wrote:
| It is allowed in the US.
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/overuse-of-
| antibiotics/what-...
| joelthelion wrote:
| Do we actually have fewer infections in Europe?
| blippe wrote:
| The rate of infections are very diverse in Europe. In
| Scandinavia it is extremely low, they test the chickens
| several times during their lifetime and kills the whole
| flock if any of them is contaminated. Until they joined the
| EU all eggs were "washed" which removed other unwanted
| pathogens. The EU forced them to accept unwashed eggs and
| allowed them for the time being to continue selling washed
| eggs. Most other countries does not use such draconian
| methods to their farming and the washing of eggs removes a
| thin membrane which gives some protection from salmonella
| travelling between the eggs.
| ane wrote:
| Yes, considerably.
|
| > "In the EU, over 91,000 salmonellosis cases are reported
| each year"
|
| https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/salmonella
|
| And in the US, from the article:
|
| > " Salmonella hospitalizes and kills more people in the
| U.S. than any other foodborne pathogen, with about 1.35
| million illnesses, 26,500 hospitalizations and more than
| 400 deaths each year."
|
| US population is 330 million, EU is about 450 million. The
| difference in salmonellosis prevalence is _huge_.
| coob wrote:
| In the US, chickens are washed in a chlorine solution.
|
| This is not allowed in UK/EU, as it's believed it's better to
| fix the problem at source and that no-one will bother to do
| that if there's end-bleaching.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > as it's believed it's better to fix the problem at source
|
| Well, there are two other problems:
|
| - There's rather limited evidence that the chlorine thing is
| particularly effective for removing surface bacteria.
|
| - Chicken meat can and commonly does harbour bacteria in the
| interior.
| EliRivers wrote:
| Don't you worry about that, BoJo is on the case. He'll get
| the UK onto chlorine washed chicken soon enough!
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Citation needed
| hammock wrote:
| Is this why chicken should be rinsed, to remove the chlorine?
| rsynnott wrote:
| Chicken shouldn't be rinsed; it's a weirdly persistent
| myth, not actual safety advice.
|
| I live in a non-chlorinated-poultry country, and there are
| still dept of health ads every Christmas warning people not
| to attempt to rinse turkeys; wherever the idea came from it
| probably wasn't chlorination.
| hammock wrote:
| The warning not to rinse turkeys is probably because you
| don't want a wet bird to go into a deep fryer, that is
| how explosions happen.
|
| I would not expect a health agency, which requires
| processors to use a chlorine rinse that presumably the
| agency approves as "safe and healthy", to say that your
| chicken should be rinsed of any excess chlorine before
| cooking. They think the amount of chlorine is safe and
| want you to believe so as well.
|
| And I know people rinse chicken for reasons other than
| what I am suggesting.
|
| However I am still looking for a good answer to whether
| there is chlorine residue on chicken that can be removed
| by rinsing in the home. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough at
| first.
| gruez wrote:
| >I would not expect a health agency, which requires
| processors to use a chlorine rinse that presumably the
| agency approves as "safe and healthy", to say that your
| chicken should be rinsed of any excess chlorine before
| cooking. They think the amount of chlorine is safe and
| want you to believe so as well.
|
| why not? health agencies approve pesticides as well, but
| they advise you to rinse off vegetables/fruit.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Woah hang-on there. People deep fry christmas turkeys?
|
| Eeek.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| It's not as bizarre as it sounds. They're not breaded,
| simply dinked into hot oil and deep-fried for half an
| hour or so. If you're not an idiot and follow basic
| precautions it's a pretty reasonable way to do things, as
| it's much quicker than roasting for multiple hours.
|
| Basic precautions include:
|
| * Do it outside away from structures
|
| * Keep a fire extinguisher handy
|
| * Make sure there's no ice in the bird
|
| * Measure the displacement of the bird (by filling your
| pot with water), and add the appropriate amount of oil
|
| * Heat the oil up to 250, then add the bird. Don't let
| the temp get over 350.
|
| I have a propane stove I use for making beer; it's often
| sold as a turkey fryer stove
| deathanatos wrote:
| > * Measure the displacement of the bird (by filling your
| pot with water), and add the appropriate amount of oil
|
| I don't disagree with this point (in fact I think it is
| prudent), but isn't the bird now wet once again, which
| was how this conversation started?
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I've never dried off the bird particularly; if you don't
| dunk it until the oil is around 250, it typically drops
| the temp down to near 212 (100C) and the water boils off
| pretty gently. The real issue is if you have ice, which
| is often present in big chunks.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It's pretty tasty. I just did one for the first time a
| couple weeks ago (as a test so I'd understand the process
| and timing a little better before Thanksgiving). I don't
| know if it's necessarily that much better than a good
| oven roasting, but I did a 14 pound turkey in 45 minutes.
| Cerium wrote:
| With an electric turkey fryer (essentially an electric
| oven with the door on the top) frying a holiday turkey is
| easy and safe. It results in a very nicely cooked turkey
| without taking up any space in the kitchen (we plug it
| into an outlet outside the house).
| rsynnott wrote:
| > The warning not to rinse turkeys is probably because
| you don't want a wet bird to go into a deep fryer,
|
| That's not a thing here; I think deep-frying turkeys is
| purely an American phenomenon. The reason that health
| authorities discourage it is that it can lead to
| aerosolized bacterial contamination.
|
| > I would not expect a health agency, which requires
| processors to use a chlorine rinse
|
| Chlorine rinses aren't allowed in the EU. Incidentally,
| they're not actually _mandatory_ in the US, though they
| are common practice there, I gather because they're seen
| as a cheaper way to meet salmonella prevalence goals than
| controls earlier in the process.
|
| > However I am still looking for a good answer to whether
| there is chlorine residue on chicken that can be removed
| by rinsing in the home.
|
| I mean, if you're in a chicken-chlorination country,
| maybe? But small amounts of chlorine don't seem
| particularly a problem.
| gruez wrote:
| You shouldn't rinse chicken, period.
|
| https://www.usda.gov/media/press-
| releases/2019/08/20/washing...
|
| also, AFAIK people rinse off meat to "get rid of the
| blood/slime", not to get rid of the chroline smell.
| Presumably they do a good enough job rinsing off the
| chlorine that it doesn't smell like pool water by the time
| it hits store shelves.
| azinman2 wrote:
| According to that linked article, it's because ppl
| believe it'll "clean" the raw chicken making it safer
| (which seems insane to me unless you're using soap..
| which would be a weird thing to do with meat).
|
| As long as you continue treating everything as if it's
| still lined with bacteria, why not wash?
| imglorp wrote:
| Good idea. Unfortunately it would need a better name because
| people panic hearing the R word, perhaps Green Washed (tm) for
| your protection [washed in gamma rays, that is].
|
| On a related note, there may also be a huge issue with Prion
| diseases in the food supply but the USDA is not testing
| extensively for it. We just don't know and it has a decades-
| long incubation period. Irradiation may not be an option.
| eneumann wrote:
| Are prions linked to irradiated food? They are terrifying but
| I know very little about them.
| tata71 wrote:
| Uh. Is this real?
| imglorp wrote:
| https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalhealth/nvap
| /...
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