Avoid Turkey Disease!
Since my day job had to do with food safety, I thought it would be good to give out some information on how to safely handle that holiday dinner and how to avoid the dread Thanksgiving Disease. After all, we don’t want family and friends to become sick because of the wonderful food they just consumed to celebrate the holidays. To make sure this doesn’t happen, and before I give you specific information on Thanksgiving Disease, we are going to start at the beginning: shopping for food.
When one is choosing meat or poultry, pay attention to the temperature controls the market uses. If there is no thermometer or gauge to measure the temperature, there is no way of telling if the meat or poultry is being kept at the proper temperature. If the product is frozen, one does not have to worry as much, but if you are buying fresh, it is critical that the meat case be below 40 degrees F. The second thing to watch is the expiration or sell by date. You would not want to buy meat that is past the sell by date, especially poultry or fish. Some people like their beef a little aged, but aged beef still needs to be trimmed. Finally, buy your meat items last and if your market has those extra plastic bags near the meat department, use them to prevent contamination of the outside of the package or prevent leakage of blood that could contaminate your car seat or other groceries nearby.
With your car safely packed with goodies that need refrigeration, the best thing to do is to go straight home, unload them and place the refrigerated items in the refrigerator. I have actually had people who know my field of expertise call me up and ask if that fresh turkey they put in the trunk this morning and then parked at the hardware store in 90 degree weather for a couple of hours before driving home is still good. I say when in doubt, pitch it! It is more important to be safe than sorry. Besides, in the case of the turkey in the trunk, that car sitting in the parking lot gets mighty hot when the sun is out, even if the air outside the car has a chill to it. High temperatures are where the bacteria that make you sick thrive.
Once you have the food home, be sure to pop it in the refrigerator right away. The longer it is kept at a temperature warmer than 40 degrees, the more bacteria will grow on it. Any places that might have had juices from the package leak onto it must be cleaned up. To make sure your sponge or cleaning cloth is safe, put it in the microwave for one minute before using it to clean. Use a clean dish cloth and a spray bottle with a mixture of bleach and water (2 tablespoons bleach to a quart of water) to do the final sanitizing. When sanitizing the kitchen, do not forget those places where hands regularly touch: cupboard doors, counters, handles to cabinets, oven and refrigerator and water faucets. These should all be cleaned and sanitized both before and after any major cooking in the kitchen.
The next step is to cook that bird! Take it out of the refrigerator, carefully cut the wrapper around it and remove the neck and giblets. Wash the giblets under cold water and scrape out the kidneys. The kidneys are located in the backbone and are dark red like the liver. They are a filter for the body and I recommend removing them as any antibiotics, pesticides or other agents that might have gotten in or been placed in the bird’s food would have a much higher concentration in the kidneys. Note: the liver also tends to collect any of these substances as well.
You can stuff the bird, but do not stuff it too tight as this adds to the cooking time and the possibility of food poisoning. The safest way is to cook stuffing on the side. After the bird is in the oven and before you begin making the trays of deviled eggs, crackers and cheeses with carrot sticks, celery etc. (Man, I am getting hungry!), be sure to clean and sanitize your hands and all surfaces that contacted the turkey either directly or indirectly. This is especially important of cutting boards. Now let’s eat!
After dinner, it is time to make sure that Thanksgiving disease does not invade your holiday. Do this by putting all refrigerated food away immediately after eating. Thanksgiving Disease is a mild form of food borne illness that causes cramps, diarrhea and vomiting. It happens because some people leave the food on the table too long after the meal is finished and this bacterium grows while you are watching the game and working up another appetite. You then make a plate and either eat it cold or pop it into the microwave hoping to nuke anything that might have grown there since dinner ended. You will kill the microbe that causes Thanksgiving Disease if you put your food in the microwave and punch in enough time; however, the chemicals the bacterium discharged into the food while it was alive can still make you sick. Refrigeration avoids this and other problems.
Now that we know how to defeat the dread Thanksgiving Disease, we can enjoy our holiday feasts as long as we remember to follow the food handling rules: clean, sanitize and refrigerate. And do not forget that Thanksgiving disease and other food borne diseases can appear any time of year that food is handled carelessly.
Ira White is a retired Consumer Safety Officer for the Food Safety Inspection Service of the USDA.