Well they do grow maggots , for infected wound debridement (eg gangrene started), in relatively sterile and controlled conditions, so that the maggots don’t introduce a pathogen that makes it counterproductive to use maggots.
When you are young and healthy you can eat raw meat, probably, 99 out of 100 times you won’t get deadly sick. So someone doing it once means nothing.
There are numerous diseases, e coli is the big one, but there’s also salmonella, staph , Leptospira …
and numerous others that might come from the beef cattle which is just started to get sick… Now the beef cattle spread it between themselves because of the manure everywhere… Some of those cattle are symptomless carriers … there is evolutionary selection pressure for the bacteria to become symptomless in beef cattle… because the ranchers choose symptomless cattle to keep alive and thus select the bacteria strains that are symptomless. They may be trying to identify sources of serious human diseases like E coli… But its unlikely that we can ever trust that the cattle/sheep etc are free of human disease causing pathogens and parasites.
One part of the butchering process is to hang the meat for a while to soften it. This means that the bacteria thrive. Actually it requires bacteria, so the idea of sterile meat is somewhat difficult… of course its possible to evolve , or create, an artificial meat that is rather soft because it never went tough … artificial meat wouldn’t have to survive, and act as muscle, in a walking talking beast, so it could be soft…
But… but… but… what if its dragon steak cut from the heart of Smog?*
*Assumes that you hunted and killed it with your own M1A1 Abrams or your own personal Spruance Destroyer.
I’m a deer hunter and butcher my own game. It’s pretty rare (ha!) that I don’t succumb to the urge to snack on a couple of thin slices of raw venison while I’m doing the job.
Clearly true “food poisoning” (as in poisonous chemicals produced by microbes that are still there even after cooking) does obviously happen, and is very serious, sometimes fatal, how common is it statistically speaking? Anecdotally most of the “food poisoining” I have encountered personally was most likely caused by actual microbes, and I think have been prevented if the food in question had been properly cooked immediately before serving.
The case in the OP is pretty extreme, but I am generally pretty scathing of the germophobic inclination of society generally (“OMG this meat has been kept out of the fridge briefly, we can’t possibly cook it!”) Is there a statistic someone can point me to back me up, or convince me I’m crazy, e.g. “in X percent of cases scientists detected dangerous chemicals in meat that had been left at Y degrees for Z minutes would not be removed by cooking”.
In our modern industrial food production system, a couple of dozen people getting sick and dying from contaminated food in a nation of 300 million people is unacceptable.
And so food handling processes that in 99 cases out of 100 would not cause a problem cannot be continued. It has to be much safer than that.
Point is, eating whole cuts of properly handled raw meat is pretty safe. More like really safe. But it isn’t really really really safe. And if you own a restaurant that serves hundreds of people every day, you can’t afford to have a couple of people get sick every month. Raw meat in and of itself is fine to eat as humans and other animals have shown for millions of years, unless it’s been contaminated by something that makes it unsafe to eat, in which case you take your chances.
The good news is that there’s a simple way to turn really safe raw meat into really really really safe cooked meat, and methods for doing so are widely known.
Someone mentioned this thread to me at a farmers’ market. I work in the beef jerky industry, so somewhat qualified to answer, at least about jerky.
In general, it is safe to eat raw meat. However, you take a risk that the meat is contaminated with alive pathogens. This would make you very sick (e.g., salmonella). Unfortunately these pathogens are quite common, so in food manufacturing our processes must ensure that these pathogens are killed in any process.
In the case of jerky, the pathogens are normally killed using heat. It doesn’t take much - around 4 minutes at 145F (63C) in high humidity, although there are many combinations of Temp/Time that will achieve the same “lethality”. Once the pathogens are killed, it is important to create a product where any survivors (or contaminants) can’t survive. These can be achieved by drying the product with a combination of salt, sugar, nitrites, etc. Many smallgoods also use lower pH to prevent pathogens from growing (e.g., salami).
If pathogens are on your meat, they are most likely to be on the outside. When you cook a steak, you’re obviously going to kill of anything nasty that might be living on the surface of your meat. The problem with mince is that the outside of the cut has been blended with everything else, so it is equally likely to have pathogens inside. This is why I am comfortable having rare steak, but I wouldn’t eat a rare hamburger made from mince.
I also wouldn’t eat rare chicken, because chicken commonly is contaminated with salmonella. Because of this risk, it is often overcooked. It’s hard to find a well-cooked chicken.
Large food processors answer to internationally accredited auditors. Small restaurants will typically answer to a local authority, and are just more inclined to take risks with their food safety (e.g., standards of “gluten free” are poorly enforced in restaurants).
Brand new poster, first post, bumping an old thread to give a business URL, and claims that this Straight Dope thread was being discussed in a farmer’s market. This isn’t rocket surgery.
[Moderating]
On the one hand, Pigweed did include a commercial link in his first post, but on the other hand, that post was informative and on-topic, and it’s at least possible that he really did just hear about the thread and wanted to share information. So I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. But I still removed the link, anyway.
Its unsafe to eat raw meat ,mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian,fish, insect ,worm,nematode,etc because of parasites.
Irrelevant to cooking, Its ALSO unsafe to STORE it and let the bacteria produce a significant amount of toxins - which is either a short time in warm conditions, or over a long time in refridgerator conditions. Of course it depends on the bacteria population too, so thats why you don’t get food poisoning every time you eat something stored for too long … But cooking isn’t a sure way to get rid of toxins, so you can get food poisoning even after eating cooked food. Eg rotten fish, even freshly cooked, could trigger asthma in asthmatics.
Sealed packages last longer when there’s some preservatives …
Freezing doesn’t kill anything (bacteria, parasites or fungi) or remove toxins, but it does stop the life forms from doing anything (growing in population or producing toxins.)
This is just not true. The FDA has had freezing standards in place for meats intended to be eaten raw for years that do indeed kill parasites. This is easily verified online.
From wiki:
“Sushi (すし, 寿司, 鮨) is the Japanese preparation and serving of specially prepared vinegared rice (鮨飯 sushi-meshi) combined with varied ingredients (ネタ neta) such as chiefly seafood (often uncooked), vegetables, and occasionally tropical fruits. Styles of sushi and its presentation vary widely, but the key ingredient is sushi rice, also referred to as shari (しゃり), or sumeshi (酢飯).”
Sushi is basically the vinegared rice.
Sashimi is the raw fish or meat.
wiki: “Sashimi (/səˈʃiːmiː/; Japanese: 刺身, pronounced [saɕi̥mi]) is a Japanese delicacy consisting of very fresh raw meat or fish sliced into thin pieces.”
Nigiri is the sashimi on the sushi.
Only heathens would freeze sashimi. Fresh. Fresh. Fresh.