Wrong to Blame Costco for Fishy Parasite

In the news today the CDC is warning about the presence of parasites in food. In a recent post on Facebook, someone singled out Costco for "allowing" a parasitic worm to exist in fresh fish. It isn't wrong to have posted the comments or the video above, but it is wrong to make it sound like a unique Costco-only experience. Costco has been bashed and bullied all over the internet for allowing such a perversion of fresh food to occur. In fact, if anything, the parasite proved the fish was so fresh that the worm hadn't had time to die a natural death from dehydration, or excessive storage time.

Parasites can be killed with cooking

Here's the thing. It's NOT Costco's fault. Parasites are everywhere, in every type of food, in every corner of the planet. The existence of parasites is a primary reason we cook food before we eat it. The heat of cooking kills the parasite. You don't know it, but in your lifetime you've eaten millions of cooked parasites, and you liked eating them. You didn't notice because they probably tasted like chicken.

If food is fresh, and uncooked, the pesky worm-like rascals will remain alive and well, until the part about being uncooked changes. Fresh fish, meat, poultry, vegetables, fruit.....ALL have the potential for harboring parasites. Parasites are, potentially, in ALL fresh food, EVERYWHERE in the world.

The confusion comes from the perception of some people that the world is perfect, and so shouldn't have parasites. This misconception extends beyond the common citizen all the way to the nation's congressional leaders. The ignorance about food safety, shared by so many individuals, is the cause for ALL panic over parasites. Just a little knowledge can go a long way toward relieving parasite-panic.These are the people who can benefit, immediately, from food safety training :

• Food Industry professionals can't function properly without food safety knowledge.
• Teachers, especially for basic science, and most especially culinary skills must have a thorough knowledge of food safety.
• School students should not graduate without thorough Food Safety Training. 
• Babysitters, dietitians, care givers, all need Food Safety Training. 
• A congressman should not be able to create legislation about food safety without first being trained about it. 

By the way, that training is available for everyone, here at www.FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com.

So, the next time you spot a squrmy, wormy life form in a package of fresh fish, or any fresh food, just remind yourself that cooking will make it go away. Problem solved.

Thank you,

Andy Bozeman

Learn more about Food Safety.
Take the Online Training Class at www.FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com

The 7 Day Rule

It's May 8th, 2014. In a favorite grocery store, a little while ago, I picked up a package of deli-prepared bean casserole. Bean Casserole is one of my favorite dishes, and I was very excited to find it already made and ready to eat. Then, as always, I checked the label for the expiration date to know how much time was left to safely eat this dish.

Pack Date instead of Expiration Date

Instead, I found a Pack Date. That's the calendar date on which the food was cooked and packed into the container. A Pack Date is as good as an Expiration Date, although it reads differently. It's part of one important rule about food life-spans : The 7 Day Rule.

The 7 Day Rule is not like the 5 Second Rule. Using 5SR is playing pathogen roulette with your food. There's really no amount of time so short that pathogens can't grab on to dropped food. Never rely on the 5 Second Rule. Always rely on the 7 Day Rule. This rule is an official guideline implemented by every Department of Health in the United States and many foreign countries.

It works like this : All recipes prepared in-house, meaning within the kitchen of a restaurant, facility, or a private home, which combine ingredients, whether raw or previously cooked, have a maximum storage life of seven days from the date and time of the preparation of the first ingredient.

For example : if Bean Casserole is the dish, and the green beans were cooked on May 1st, then May 1st is day one of seven, even though the final assembly and cooking of the casserole doesn't occur until May 6th.

It seems as simple as starting with the Pack Date of May 1st, and adding seven 24 hour increments, yielding an expiration date of May 8th. Get it? From May 1st to May 2nd is day #1. From May 2nd to May 3rd is day #2, and so on until May 7th to the end of May 8th is the seventh and last day. Since I was in the store on may the 8th, there's no problem, right?

But I said, "It seems as simple." It's not. In addition to an expiration date, there's also an expiration time, a specific moment signifying the death of food. There's one more part to the 7 Day Rule. In addition to the required Pack Date, another requirement is the Pack Time.

The Pack Time is the exact time, to the second, at which the proper cooking of the food was finished. The 7 Day Rule begins it's countdown at the Pack Time and ends at the exact same time on the seventh day. In the absence of a Pack Time, like my Bean Casserole, the official policy is to presume the most strict interpretation of a possible preparation time for the given day. That means, for my casserole with no stated pack time, the officially recognized moment of birth will be May 1st, 2014 at 12:00:01AM. Even if the cooking time was late in the afternoon on the 1st, if it didn't get written down, it did not happen.

That really changes things. From 12:00:01AM on May 1st to 12:00:01AM on May 2nd is day #1 and so on until we get to 12:00:01AM on May 8th, the end of day #7.

I was in the store on May 8th at 4PM, hours past the officially recognized last second of the food's lifetime. By the time I got there, the bean casserole had been dead for sixteen hours. Sadly, I did not buy the product.  So, why was it still in the store?

My grocery store of choice is a good one, well managed, well stocked, and the stock well attended. I'll give leeway to the deli manager for being in the process of policing expired stock. The expired casserole just hadn't been removed yet, but by now, at this writing, it probably has.

The point is that we all have to be aware enough of the condition of the food we consume to watch out for ourselves. Deli managers, or any managers, can't do it all for us. At least if we know the 7 Day Rule, and Pack Dates, and Pack Times, an expired bean casserole won't be the reason we expire.

Thanks

Andy Bozeman

Learn more about Food Safety.
Take the Online Training Class at www.FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com