Health Law

Consumers as kill step

By Drew Falkenstein

The folks over at barfblog.com have created the following table showing outbreaks involving pre-cooked microwavable chicken products.  Clearly, the first and best line of defense in outbreaks involving pre-cooked products is for the product manufacturer to not use contaminated ingredients, or ensure that the harmful bacteria are fully eradicated by cooking it thoroughly.

In his expose article on the topic back in 2009, in response to the ConAgra pot pie Salmonella outbreak, Michael Moss of the New York Times reported that:

Federal regulators have pushed companies to beef up their cooking instructions with the detailed 'food safety' guides. But the response has been varied, as a review of packaging showed. Some manufacturers fail to list explicit instructions; others include abbreviated guidelines on the side of their boxes in tiny print. A Hungry-Man pot pie asks consumers to ensure that the pie reaches a temperature that is 11 degrees short of the government-established threshold for killing pathogens. Questioned about the discrepancy, Blackstone acknowledged it was using an older industry standard that it would rectify when it printed new cartons
 

Some food safety experts say they do not think the solution should rest with the consumer. Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said companies like ConAgra were asking too much. 'I do not believe that it is fair to put this responsibility on the back of the consumer, when there is substantial confusion about what it means to prepare that product,' Dr. Osterholm said.

In fact, the Times article continued:

attempts by The New York Times to follow the directions on several brands of frozen meals, including ConAgra's Banquet pot pies, failed to achieve the required 165-degree temperature. Some spots in the pies heated to only 140 degrees even as parts of the crust were burnt.

A ConAgra consumer hotline operator said the claims by microwave-oven manufacturers about their wattage power could not be trusted, and that any pies not heated enough should not be eaten. 'We definitely want it to reach that 165-degree temperature,' she said. 'It's a safety issue.'

In 2007, the U.S.D.A.'s inspection of the ConAgra plant in Missouri found records that showed some of ConAgra's own testing of its directions failed to achieve 'an adequate lethality' in several products, including its Chicken Fried Beef Steak dinner. Even 18 minutes in a large conventional oven brought the pudding in a Kid Cuisine Chicken Breast Nuggets meal to only 142 degrees, the federal agency found.

Given the difficulty that consumers, and the industry, have in using cooking as a final kill step, the better solution is for pathogens that can kill people to not be in frozen food products in the first place. 

Full post as published by Food Poison Blog on June 24, 2010 (boomark / email).