The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday on a rise in infections from Salmonella in 2010, the deadliest food-borne germ, because of poor food handling skills by home cooks.
Food Illness and the Kitchen – WSJ.com.
If you want to improve your food handling skills, including biological contaminants, check out Smart Kitchen’s Lesson 3: Food Preparation Basics, Topic 8: Food Handling & Safety.
“The Smartest Way to Learn to Cook.”
Is It Time to Dive Back in the Gulf Waters?
The Gulf waters are re-opening to fishermen and government inspectors say that seafood cleared for sale has been thouroughly inspected. Still in early August 54% of Americans did not trust the Gulf seafood, which accounts for 2% of overall U.S. seafood consumption. We don’t think its unreasonable to be wary but remember your grocer won’t stock and you won’t be buying a tarry, oily, sludge blackened, fish steak. The main problem with oil contamination is the poly cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, the same hydrocarbon that forms in grilled meats, which is considered a potential cancer causing chemical.
If you want to support the gulf fishermen, you may want to start with fish since fish process oil contamination fastest.
Blue Crab Can Make Your Mouth Water
Oysters and Crabs take longer to process the contaminants, which is a shame because the crap picture from The 2009 Summer Food Drive is making me hungry. Shrimp are somewhere in the middle on the processing contamination scale.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are an estimated 76 million U.S. cases of food borne illness annually resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. The Food and Drug Administration inspected fewer than one quarter of U.S. food production facilities annually and failed to take regulatory action against more than half of those that violated standards in fiscal year 2007. These inspection statistics do not include all the foreign farms and food production facilities that export their wares to our shores. There has never been a more important time to be proficient in your food handling. Sign up to learn about the launch of SmartKitchen.com. We will have lessons on many things culinary, including professional grade food handling. P Chef