Comments on: Food terror

By: Wednesday’s tasty tidbits « Eat Cheap, Eat Well, Eat Up!

Wednesday’s tasty tidbits « Eat Cheap, Eat Well, Eat Up! — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:46:06 +0000

[...] The latest food scare–tainted peanut butter–reveals consumers still place too much trust in our current food safety system. It’s the “halo effect,” a new Hartman Group report reveals. Shoppers believe that if a food is labeled “natural” or “gourmet,” it must be higher quality than lower-priced brands. In fact, premium products are often sourced from the same producers as the ordinary stuff. Hartman President and COO Laurie Demeritt says consumers say they’re concerned about food safety when asked about it, but when shopping, they don’t scrutinize the source of their food and assume it’s safe. This echoes a recent study from Cornell University. [...]

By: mannashton

mannashton — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:48:58 +0000

Good point, Frank. You’re right, so you’d probably fall under #1 in the poll .

Adequately cooked chicken (to an internal temp of 165 degrees) and eggs (until the yolks and whites are firm or to 160 degrees, or use pasteurized eggs) is safe to eat, even if the chicken had bird flu. Bird flu exposure is probably more of an issue for food-service workers who handle raw chicken and eggs; and even they’re fine if they follow proper food safety procedures.

I’m waiting to hear back from the lead study investigator to find out how they settled on bird flu as the focus of their hypothetical experiment. Clearly, they wanted to gauge consumers’ reactions to a potential terrorist threat involving food, though they may not have selected the best “threat.”

By: frank

frank — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 02:32:51 +0000

Stupid study. Cooked chicken would not transmit the any of the avian influenza strains as they all die below the normal cooking temperature. I guess the study should have been run by somebody that knows about food an the terrorist threat.