Careful about the chicken

gdenby

We all know that commercial chicken can be covered w. salmonella, and we have to clean and cook carefully. Turns out we may need to be v-e-r-y careful. Some of you may have heard that chicken is sometimes washed w. chlorine to cleanse it. turns out, that just makes it impossible for standard tests for pathogens to show them.

See here for technical summary.

thetrim

Great, now we all have to have our chicken farms too.

jtcBoynton

Don't see how this changes anything for the home cook.  You always need to assume the bird has salmonella, which is why proper heat application is important.  As for having your own chicken farm, salmonella can impact home raised birds as well (maybe not as often, but they aren't doing any testing to really know).

The Cen-Tex Smoker

Havent’ bought commercial yard bird in a long time. have no intention of going back. I pay $4.50lb for whole birds and butcher them myself. Turns out pasture raised birds taste a lot better too. Who knew?

gdenby

jtcBoynton said:

Don't see how this changes anything for the home cook.  You always need to assume the bird has salmonella, which is why proper heat application is important.  As for having your own chicken farm, salmonella can impact home raised birds as well (maybe not as often, but they aren't doing any testing to really know).

Like I said, everyone on this forum I would expect to know how to handle chicken. But from what I gather, the chlorine treatment was believed to wipe out the bacteria. Turns out the treatment isn't actually doing something significant, and I would have to suppose chicken so treated would have a chlorine residue. So, deal w. mass produced chix w. due diligence.

HeavyG

Given recent events with lettuce this seems important to industry and consumers - from the article:

"This study found that chlorine, a sanitizer commonly used for fresh produce, induces a VBNC state in the food-borne pathogens Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella enterica."

Somebody needs to start a Kickstarter project for a home food irradiation gizmo.

gdenby

In the wake of reading the article, I started looking up other methods to remove pathogens. Thought maybe a box w. evaporating dry ice might do the job. Probably not, and probably disastrous for vegs tissue. But did come across an article about CO2 drying of herbs. That in turn led to articles that re-enforced what i had thought about the use of certain herbs. Thyme and oregano oil can destroy salmonella. Seems like classic herb rubs for poultry don't just taste good, but greatly reduce the chance of pathogen infection.

So a little less drastic than irradiation (wonder how a UV lamp might work), an essentail oil mister maybe.

BGEChicago

I gotta tell you, Bell and Evans or any air cooled chicken is worth the money! I won't go back to commercial brands! The flavor is worth the extra $1.00 a pound....