Red bean poisoning

[Smeghead]

@Blake

But botulinum doesn’t have anywhere near the “toughest, most resilient bacterial spores that may be present”. It’s actually kind of a wimp when it comes to heat lability. It’s botulinum toxin that is heat resistant, not the spores especially.

The reason why canning standards use botulinum as the benchmark is that it is ubiquitous in the environment, capable of anaerobic growth and highly pathogenic. Plenty of other bacteria are more heat resistant but, as I noted above, they either aren’t common, aren’t able to germinate within the can or aren’t pathogenic. So food scientists don’t much care about them.

Killing the “most resilient bacterial spores that may be present” would require autoclaving, by definition, and a standard can won’t withstand autoclave pressures, unless you want to autoclave the can in a separate pressure chamber after it has been sealed.

I think we’re mostly quibbling about the phrase “that may be present”. I feel quite comfortable saying that C. botulinum spores are the toughest of the common food-borne bacterial pathogens out there. People regularly test their autoclave’s performance using vials of botulism spores. As you say, there may be tougher things out there, but practically speaking, they’re not worth worrying about.

[Markxxx]

I noticed in the Wikipedia article it says the kidney beans and some other kinds…

What are the other kinds?