My father had a cousin who made sausages and stuff, and he said that the fda inspections were inadequate, and his own standards were much higher than theirs. His was a small brand, and he felt a single incident of food poisoning traced to his meat that made the news would put him out of business, and he was going to make certain that didn’t happen.
My dad used to say, regarding food poisoning, and I know this sounds crass, but it’s a way to get a business owner on board for business reasons “don’t worry about the person that dies from it, worry about it putting you out of business”.
And, with that, it’s why I hate when people accuse businesses of it. Whether it’s a serious (but without evidence) accusation directed at a restaurant or the stupid ‘taco bell made me sick’ jokes. If I were a facebook group mod, those comments would be removed unless there was good reason to believe they’re true. Those stupid jokes or (likely incorrect) accusations hurt businesses.
Some of the devices I support for my job are expected to be used in those washdown environments and they are really put to the test every night after production. Not only is the water pressurized, it might be heated and with detergents, antiseptics, antifreeze added, all making the situation worse. And the washdown team can be counted on to ‘really get in there’ with the spray and find any invisible pinholes or leaky seals. IP69K is the environmental rating for liquid jets.
The food places got nothing in the pharma sterilization zones. Whole-room-scale irradiation.
Steak tartare should be cut from the inside of a large dense cut of meat. Round steak or roast is often used for this. The outside should be washed and trimmed off leaving the interior unexposed to e. coli. There’s no guarantee the meat is safe from other pathogens but the risk becomes very low if the meat has been handled properly and maintained at proper temperatures.
Bear in mind that it’s frequently mixed with raw egg and raw onion. I recall eating it in Paris and the meat came surrounded by little heaps of various things to mix in according to your preference.
Please keep in mind this is a “Factual Question”
i.e. : Why is the lethal temperature of salmonella bacteria contained in beef considered to be approximately 145 degrees, yet in poultry it is accepted to be 165 degrees?
It’s a restaurant owner’s greatest fear, trust me. My restaurant has a really good, if not outright great, reputation, but one guy on Google reviews or Yelp can ruin me overnight after years of effort.
Which is why, to be honest, I do my very best and let the chips fall where they may and never, ever succumb to the temptation of reading reviews. My sister concerns herself with responding to those sorts of things and I tell her to never tell me something unless it’s really bad. Otherwise I’d go nuts worrying about every review that had some disgruntled jerk complaining that they got exactly what they asked for and claiming that I screwed it up.
My understanding is that it substantially has to do with the different processing methods used on poultry vs. cattle. Basically to remove chicken feathers commercial processors steam/dunk in hot water the not-yet gutted carcasses ( or in some cases maybe quickly but not thoroughly eviscerated) to make it easier to remove them mechanically. This process causes mass fecal contamination throughout the animal(s) and facility as guts relax and leak in the heat and water. The animal is progressively mechanically cleaned and washed, so there are no (obvious) poop specks on your chicken. But not before every goddamn crevice of the bird (hundreds and thousands of birds moving through the same contaminated bits of equipment) and every bit of processing equipment has been contaminated by fecal bacteria that is not so easily washed away. As a consequence the recommendation to be a little more cautious about contamination when handling raw chicken. I also believe salmonella itself is rather more universally prevalent in chicken-raising situations.
Cattle and other commercial ruminants by contrast are gutted first, then parted out in a much more discrete process so there is far less potential for contamination. Thus the notion that unless we are specifically talking ground meat (where one little bit of contamination in a vat can spread everywhere), just searing the outside of a fresh enough cut of beef usually serves to eliminate bacteria.
Presumably if you hand-cleaned a chicken very carefully, you could reduce the risk massively. But those warnings are meant for commercially-cleaned mass-produced animals you buy packaged in your average supermarket.
It isn’t. It’s assumed that beef is not infected with salmonella deep below the surface. Heating beef at a steady 145°F only until that temperature is reached in the center is not considered safe.
This Sous Vide time and temperature chart shows that cooking beef at lower temperatures requires a minimum of 1-1/2 hours cooking time. It is not simply the temperature in the center of the meat that counts.
Thanks all for your input.
After far too much time spent researching this topic based on comments here, I think an appropriate summary is:
- There is no difference in lethal temperature of the bacteria in question
here - The hallmark the USDA bases their recommendation of safe food preparation temps.is the satisfactory destruction of e.salmonella.
- The temps. provided by the USDA and their division the FSIS, (Food Safety and Inspection Service).are intentionally skewed.because of the log factor involved with initial bacterial loads encountered with commercially processed meats.As others have noted above, beef and pork have a “cleaner” slaughter process whereas, poultry has on inherently “dirtier” process that results in a much higher initial bacterial load requiring a higher log factor of bacterial destruction and hence a higher temp to be considered safe for consumption in a “convenient” and easily understood time frame.
- Salmonella et-al for all practical purposes are eliminated at near 145 degrees core temperature nearly instantaneously (within a minute or two) per USDA and FSIS. Again, this ignores real life considerations for a log 6, log 6.5, or log 7 reduction in safe bacterial load. This log factor is the cheat reason for higher temp guidance for poultry because of its higher initial bacterial load.
- Anecdotal evidence supports a clear correlation between time and temperature destruction of salmonella at well below 145 degrees that make food safe for consumption (as in sous vide) but this method to date, has not been confirmed by the USDA. The only study I was able to locate related to this was defunded before completion and publication of findings.
- Nowhere in my search did I find mention of the question at hand related to: a) meat density, b) feed type or quality, c) relative cleanliness of the animal species in question, d) etc., etc. etc.)
In fact the USDA, considers meat, poultry, fish, and shellfish to be essentially sterile before commercial processing!
It is the bacterial load that we induce during processing that drive their recommendations.
.
This is literally official FDA/FSIS guidance endorsing lower cooking temperature for longer times.
Have read all 500+ pages, plus appendix A and the comprehensive fish regs.
Nowhere does the FDA make specific recommendations re- souis vede low temp. cooking
.
Everything we go by related to such, has been “divined” as an anecdotal but unsupported reference to FDA -FSIS recommendations.
.
The reference you cite concerns commercial operation under very restricted constraints and documentation
That table on page 35 of appendix A looks an awful lot like the guidance on sous vide sites. 
Yes, it’s for commercial kitchens, which of course need to document what guidance they are following, and how they ensure they are following it.
Point taken. I was being too pedantic.
For those with Twitter access, this is an…interesting image.