WASHINGTON — Hosts of Independence Day cookouts should know that food poisoning cases surge in summer, according to safety experts, who offer a few simple rules to help keep food safe.
“Forty-eight million Americans a year get foodborne illness,” said Tanya Brown, a food safety expert with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Chill
Food served indoors should be refrigerated after two hours, Brown said, while food that’s outside should be brought in and refrigerated after one hour to prevent the growth of dangerous bacteria.
“To avoid having to take it inside, you could just keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold,” Brown said.
Tips: Keep cooked hamburgers and hot dogs in a warm spot on your grill instead of storing them in a tabletop aluminum pan. Place cooled foods on trays of ice, or bring out only small portions at a time from the refrigerator.
Cook
The USDA recommends using a thermometer to tell whether food is cooked to a safe temperature.
“Color is not an indication of doneness,” Brown said. “You can cut open a piece of chicken and it could look like it’s white all the way through, but it has not reached 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and you could eat it and get sick.”
Also: One out of every four hamburgers turns brown before it’s reached a safe internal temperature, Brown said.
The recommended temperature for ground meats — including beef, veal, lamb and pork — is 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
Separate
To avoid cross-contamination, keep meat, poultry, seafood and eggs separate from other food. Use different cutting boards for vegetables and prepared foods versus raw meat, poultry and seafood.
Also, keep raw and cooked foods away from each other.
“People will take a tray of raw hamburgers out to the grill and then as they take the cooked burgers off they’ll put it on the same plate that held raw food,” Brown said. “Don’t do that.”
Raw chicken could have salmonella; raw beef could be a source of E.coli.
Clean
Wipe up fluids from raw meats that might drip off cutting boards. Keep hands and utensils clean.
And do not wash chicken, because that only helps to spread bacteria, Brown said.
“When you wash your chicken, you’re contaminating your sink and your countertop when water splashes onto your counter,” she said.
According to federal estimates, food poisoning hits at least one in six Americans annually, while 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die.
“As long as we continue to get this word out about ‘clean, separate, cook and chill,’ we hope that those numbers start to decrease,” Brown said.
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