05/25/06 Summertime Food Safety

Summertime food safety. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. There is nothing quite as quaint, relaxing and delicious as a summertime picnic in the park. Fresh corn on the cob, potato salad, fried chicken, steak&oh and don't forget the food borne illnesses that can come along with it. With this Memorial Weekend comes the unofficial start of the barbequing season and USDA's Under Secretary for Food Safety, Dr. Richard Raymond says to remember 4 basic principles. RAYMOND: In a real concise nutshell it's clean, separate, cook and chill. And what we mean by that is for clean, food handlers and preparers should wash their hands, the utensils and the preparation surfaces very often during the food preparation process. And if they don't have soap and water available because they are out on a picnic they should bring disposable towelets or an alcohol based hand sanitizer to clean the hands and they should not transport raw product to and from the grill on the same plate which is a common error that happens way too frequently. By separate we mean don't cross contaminate. You keep the raw meat and poultry apart from other raw foods and also from vegetables and fruits. According to Dr. Raymond, cooking the meats kills the bacteria but getting raw meat juices into a salad or on a bun can cause serious illness. Another common error is to pour the remaining marinade over the cooked meats. Since the raw meat was soaking in the marinade, pouring it over the cooked meat could re-contaminate it. RAYMOND: By cook; we strongly urge everyone to use a food thermometer. Be sure the meat and poultry are safely cooked. I just can't stress this one enough. Very simply, for ground beef and pork, cook your meat to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit. And for poultry, safety is achieved by cooking to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Those temperatures will kill all food borne pathogens including avian flu virus should it reach the U.S. RAYMOND: And then by chill, refrigerate or freeze promptly. Food that has been cooked and left sitting out will become unsafe in less than 2 hours. Particularly in the summertime when the temperatures reach above 90 degrees, that food can become unsafe in just one hour. So play it safe. Put your leftovers and perishables back on the ice after eating. You don't leave it out for snacks later in the day. If you have any questions about food safety issues you can call the USDA's food hotline at 888-MP-Hotline. RAYMOND: And we also have "Ask Karen" the FSIS virtual representative and she is available 24 hours a day to answer your questions at our website. www.fsis.usda.gov. We want to make sure that those family gatherings this weekend and all summer long don't result in bad memories of the summer of '06 but instead, pleasant memories. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.