The excessive restrictions on cooking pork didn’t come out of nowhere. In decades past, pork was intrinsically less safe than other meats because of muscle infiltration by Trichinella and surface contamination from fecal-borne pathogens like Salmonella and Clostridium perfringens . As a result, people learned to tolerate overcooked pork, and farms raised pigs with increasing amounts of fat—far more fat than is typical in the wild ancestors of pigs such as wild boar. The extra fat helped to keep the meat moist when it was overcooked.
Since then, research has sharpened our understanding of pork-associated pathogens, and producers have vastly reduced the risk of contamination through preventive practices on the farm and in meat-processing facilities. Eventually the FDA relaxed the cooking requirements for pork; they are now no different than those for other meats. The irony is that few people noticed—culinary professionals and cookbook authors included. Government information aimed at consumers from both the USDA and the FDA continued to promote excessive cooking standards for pork. Amazingly, even pork industry groups continued to do the same thing.
After decades of consuming overcooked pork by necessity, the American public has little
appetite for rare pork; it isn’t considered traditional. With a lack of cultural pressure or agitation for change by industry groups, the new standards are largely ignored, and many new publications leave the old cooking recommendations intact.
Clearly, cultural and political factors impinge on decisions about food safety. If you doubt that, note the contrast between the standards applied to pork and those applied to beef. Many people love rare steak or raw beef served as carpaccio or steak tartare, and in the United States alone, millions of people safely eat beef products, whether raw, rare, or well-done. Beef is part of the national culture, and any attempt to outlaw rare or raw steak in the United States would face an immense cultural and political backlash from both the consumers and the producers of beef.
Millions of servings of rare beef steak or completely raw steak tartare or carpaccio are served every day, so if that meat were inherently dangerous, we’d certainly know by now. Scientific investigation has confirmed the practice is reasonably safe—almost invariably, muscle interiors are sterile and pathogen-free. That’s true for any meat, actually, but only beef is singled out by the FDA. The cultural significance of eating raw and rare beef, as much as the science, accounts for the FDA’s leniency in allowing beef steak to be served at any internal temperature.
Cultural and political factors also explain why cheese made from raw milk is considered safe in France yet viewed with great skepticism in the United States. Traditional cheese-making techniques, used correctly and with proper quality controls, eliminate pathogens without the need for milk pasteurization. Millions of people safely consume raw milk cheese in France, and any call to ban such a fundamental part of French culture would meet with enormous resistance there.
The United States, however, lacks a broadly recognized culture of making or eating raw milk cheeses. Not coincidentally, health officials have imposed inconsistent regulations on such cheeses. Raw milk cheese aged less than 60 days cannot be imported into the United States and cannot legally cross U.S. state lines. Yet in 24 of the 50 states, it is perfectly legal to make, sell, and consume raw milk cheeses within the state. In most of Canada raw milk cheese is banned, but in the province of Quebec it is legal.
How can these discrepancies among and even within countries persist? It comes down to politics. In areas without a substantial local population demanding unpasteurized milk cheeses—
a few gourmets, foodies, and chefs don’t count for much politically—no backlash has ensued. So the seemingly conservative rule holds, banning anything that seems remotely suspicious.
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9 Comments
Add CommentWell that explains why the time i accidentally cooked my pork roast to the internal temperature of rare/medium rare beef (140 F) it was so good !
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFantastic article - thanks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPersonally, I love a rare hamburger (red, not pink). And I'm frustrated by the refusal of most restaraunts to cook it that way. Generally, even if they say they cook to order and will cook it rare, it comes out medium or worse.
I even had a T bone steak recently which I ordered rare come out more like medium. Nothing unusual there, except the cook claimed that the local health inspector was requiring that steaks need to be cooked to 125 internal temperature!
I believe that these over-cautious public health recommendations are also applied to handling pets. This in turn causes some people to consider pets necessarily "dirty". This is untrue for well cared for pets [there should be no other standards really]. Thus many people who own pets are at a disadvantage in many parts of their lives such as finding housing and in court disputes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs the authors point out in the book, it's important to keep in mind that ground meat (or meat tenderized by puncturing) is more susceptible to contamination because external surfaces are mixed into the interior of the food. Any bacteria that get onto the outside of the meat during handling can thus be spread throughout the meat, which doesn't happen in intact muscle meats like well-butchered steaks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is thus riskier to eat ground beef that is rare, and if you don't have complete confidence in the hygiene of the butchering and handling that went into the preparation of the ground meat, the safest course is to cook the meat longer or to a higher temperature.
I plan to grill a steak for dinner tonight. Seared on the outside and running red when cut. If it don't bleed it's burnt! As for pork, pink inside running clear juices on the plate is just fine. I also prefer limp bacon. Runny eggs go great with it. Sushi is also a part of my diet. If Big Brother doesn't like it, he can shove it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBig Brother isn't forcing your hand in your own kitchen. You are free to take your own risks there, this article discuses regulations for food manufacturers and restaurants.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile I agree that many of the regulations are arbitrarily assigned and influenced by factors other than safety, I can't help but think that I'd rather not risk a food-borne illness (especially for someone who's immunocompromised) just for the sake of a slightly more delicious pork chop.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd rather be overcooking food than risking undercooking (due to faulty thermometers, cooks who don't know any better, etc.) because the food safety guidelines are right on the cusp of safety.
I think the bigger issue is how food manufacturers may be taking advantage of these extreme cooking guidelines to be more slack with their microbial control. If they know it'll be cooked to a 12D level of destruction, what's the incentive to use good manufacturing processes?
I am grateful that this article is here because I too love a rare steak, carpaccio, and sushi, but as wayt pointed out, ground beef is an exception.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGround beef is probably not safe unless you see it ground for yourself by a butcher you trust. Any given pound of commercially-produced ground beef can and does contain pathogens from literally thousands of cows, usually dairy cattle worn out by several years of filthy conditions, rBGH, antibiotics, and chronic low-level infection. To that, add scrap meat from all over the country, and grind. It's a food safety nightmare.
Because of this the meat packing industry has (once again!) started to use ammonia gas to "disinfect" ground beef, a practice exposed by Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which detailed the horrific conditions for humans, animals, and our food in the meatpacking industry of the time. Legislation ensued, and for perhaps 50 years we had reasonable standards for meatpackers. This has since been undone, and now we're back (once again!) to having immigrants paid in dirt perform this work, on lines whose speed has been increased again and again, rendering it impossible for even the most conscientious gutter to ensure that there isn't shit in the meat. We're right back where we were at the start of the 20th Century in terms of labor and animal abuse, and right back where we were in terms of food safety.
I encourage all readers to purchase their meat from smaller, more local vendors -- the reward in taste, nutrition (e.g. grass-fed meat), and safety is more than worth it. If you are reading this article to begin with, you are likely to notice and appreciate the difference!
Readers of this article might be interested in my response to this excerpt posted here: http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/blog/147413/11/03/27/more-modernist-cuisine-and-bad-microbial-food-safety-colbert-careful-clostridiu
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn short, while I agree that some standards today are inconsistent, the authors do make some microbiological errors that would lead to food safety problems.