Health officials have admitted as much. In a January 2007 report published in the Journal of Food Protection , a panel called the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods conceded that, on the basis of preconceived notions of consumer taste, the FSIS recommended higher cooking temperatures to consumers than to makers of processed chicken products: "T he temperatures recommended to consumers by the FSIS exceed those provided to food processors, because poultry pieces cooked to 160 °F are generally unpalatable to the consumer because of the pink appearance and rubbery texture."
Elsewhere in the same report, the authors suggested that a final temperature of 77 degrees C / 170 degrees F for whole-muscle breast meat and 82 degrees C / 180 degrees F for whole-muscle thigh meat “may be needed for consumer acceptability and palatability.”
These are amazing admissions! In effect, the authors are saying that FSIS consumer regulations, which are ostensibly based on safety considerations, are in reality based on bureaucrats’ beliefs about consumer preference. That is hardly their charter! Shouldn’t chefs and consumers be the ones to decide what they would prefer to eat? Perhaps the most galling aspect of this stance is that the advisors are just wrong about the culinary facts. Chicken cooked at 58 degrees C / 136 degrees F and held there for the recommended time is neither rubbery nor pink . In our opinion its texture and flavor are far superior to those of chicken cooked at the extremely high temperatures the experts recommend. Regulators’ misguided and patronizing attempts to cater to consumer preference have served only to perpetuate the tradition of overcooking chicken.
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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.