Chicken Checker – See how often salmonella was found at meat processing plants
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It's something like 5% of chicken you buy at the grocery store.
Yet I still do it, because it tastes good. I imagine OP’s reasons are similar.
“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/nicholasreimann/2021/10/29/salm...
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.
[1] - http://t0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcR5UDimbyF_W_fUOKg...
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.
A lot of it comes down to higher temperatures in the dishwasher
Beef, except for pre-ground beef, is generally much safer than poultry.
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.
The same stringency is applied to egg production.
https://svenskfagel.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/arsrapport...
Perhaps someone in possession of the details can conform, clarify, or correct.
Chicken raising is problematic, as is the slaughterhouse environment where they are processed.
[1] https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/consumer-...
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.
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.
It's not worth the risk for public health agencies to recommend 150°, that I can agree on. Too much room for inexperienced cooks to make an error.
But chicken held at 150° for a few minutes (which is hard to avoid in most scenarios) is no less safe than the hypothetical "165° for an instant" scenario.
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.
Im not sure what this means. What is the risk-reward being evaluated to see if it is worth it?
Public health guidance should be (and is?) instructions for how to produce reliably safe food.
Is shouldn't be (and isn't?) guidance for what the tradeoff should be between risk and pleasure.
The latter is entirely subjective and up to individuals. This is why you can go out to a public restaurant and get chicken sashimi if you want.[1]
Chicken sashimi is almost (but not in law) prohibited (except limited area) by Japanese health center but it still served because of those restaurants are stupid. They constantly produce ill customer. To be fair, most restaurants won't serve raw chickens.
Speaking about limited area, Kyushu produces very clean chickens that considered to very low risk to eat in raw (Torisashi). They are allowed by local health center.
You actually can't do that, with very few exceptions.
“A raw animal food such as raw egg, raw fish, raw marinated fish, raw molluscan shellfish, or steak tartare, or a partially cooked food such as lightly cooked fish, soft cooked eggs, or rare meat other than whole-muscle, intact beef steaks as specified in subdivision (c), may be served or offered for sale upon consumer request or selection in a ready-to-eat form if either of the following conditions are satisfied: (1) All of the following requirements are met: (A) As specified in paragraph (1) or (2) of subdivision (e) of Section 114091, the food facility serves a population that is not a highly susceptible population. (B) The food, if served or offered for service by consumer selection from a children’s menu, does not contain comminuted meat. (C) The consumer is informed pursuant to Section 114093 to ensure its safety, the food should be cooked as specified in subdivision (a) or (b). (2) The department grants a variance from subdivision (a) or (b) pursuant to Section 114417 based on a HACCP plan that satisfies all of the following conditions: (A) It is submitted by the permitholder and approved pursuant to Sections 114417.1 and 114417.3. (B) It documents scientific data or other information showing that a lesser time and temperature regimen results in safe food. (C) It verifies that equipment and procedures for food prepared and training of food employees at the food facility meet the conditions of the variance.”
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CEH/DFDCS/CDPH%20Document%2...
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)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...
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.
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 150° will probably hit 155° or higher over the next couple minutes.
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.
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.
As long as you continue treating everything as if it’s still lined with bacteria, why not wash?
Exactly. I'm not a least-common-denominator that these public health recommendations cater to. Give me the real info please.
I am skeptical that they would rinse the chlorine off of the chicken at the factory. That seems like an extra step adding not only cost but risk of a bacterial bloom occurring between the factory and the store/home.
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.
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.
Eeek.
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
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?
why not? health agencies approve pesticides as well, but they advise you to rinse off vegetables/fruit.
As far as I know, the rationale given for washing fruits and vegetables is not because of pesticides, but because of dirt and bacteria. As far as the public is to be concerned, any pesticide residue that makes it into your home is to be considered "acceptably low."
The USDA makes no mention of pesticides:
>Before eating or preparing fresh fruits and vegetables, wash the produce under running tap water to remove any lingering dirt. This reduces any germs that may be present. If the fruits or vegetables have a firm surface, such as apples or potatoes, they can be scrubbed with a brush.
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.
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.
> ”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.
https://www.consumerreports.org/overuse-of-antibiotics/what-...
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.
I was looking for evidence that irradiation can neutralize prions (along with viruses and bacteria), not cause them.
Unlike quite a bit of industrial farming including growing most vegan staples.
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."
"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.
77% of global farm land is used by livestock already (https://ourworldindata.org/land-use) and is a leading cause of deforestation.
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.
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.
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-...
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/us/onions-salmonella-outb...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just always feels like a missed opportunity to provide actual meaningful data.
Just type in the state abbreviation.
The search box lets you search any part of the address. You need to use proper abbreviations for example, but I don't see how you wouldn't be able to find a plant by state.
Just seems this could have been done a lot better, with very little effort.
I'm not sure what you are considering, but I can't see how if I can look it up by full address, being able to lookup multiple by zip would change the representation of data, or change its usefulness?
But only by single location, I'm not sure if you've been near a chicken processing plant, but they are very often clustered together, shockingly near where an abundance of commercial chicken farms are, so knowing the percentage chance by an area can be very useful.
I don't think my perspective and interest seem to be aligning with most people commenting here.
I'm not concerned about if a random package of chicken is OK, I'm concerned about a cluster of processors.