Menu For Success 8-5-11: Food Safety Alert

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Thank you for your time and interest. The goal of "Menu For Success" is to share our best thinking, tools, information and resources to help you realize success in your health care community. This issue provides you with an important food safety alert about food recalls.

Please contact Nutricopia with your dietary questions, comments or suggestions for future issues of "Menu For Success".

Check the Menu For Success archive for past issues and articles.

Lee Tincher, MS, RD

President, Nutricopia, Inc.

Issue No. 15

August 5, 2011

Food Safety Alert: Ground Turkey Recall

The USDA announced that Cargill Inc. has recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey due to possible contamination with a multi-drug resistant strain of Salmonella Heidelberg. Salmonella is often found in poultry, but this strain is resistant to commonly used antibiotics and can be life threatening to those with compromised immune systems including the elderly and young children. The meat company is recalling ground turkey products produced at their Arkansas plant from February 20, 2011 through August 2, 2011. The products include chubs of fresh and frozen ground turkey meat, retail trays of ground turkey and ground turkey patties. The packages recalled include the code "P-963" on the label inside the USDA mark of inspection. A complete list of the recalled products and their packaging can be found here, and additional details can be found at their recall website: www.cargill.com/turkey-recall.

Symptoms of Salmonellosis include diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and fever within 6 to 72 hours of ingesting the contaminated food. Additional symptoms may be chills, headache, nausea and vomiting that can last up to 7 days.

Steps for Healthcare Communities:

Check your cold storage for any packages of ground turkey products.
Inspect the labels for the P-963 code.
Do not cook or serve any products with this code.
Contact your grocery vendor for instructions for a refund.

Safe Food Handling Tips:

Practice appropriate handwashing before and after handling raw meat.
Thoroughly wash and sanitize cutting boards and surfaces after preparing raw meat.
Cook all poultry meat to an internal temperature of 165 F for at least 15 seconds confirmed with a meat thermometer.
Maintain hot food for holding at 140 F or above.
Cool leftover cooked meat to 70 F in the first 2 hours and 41 F within the next 4 hours.
Best practice is to discard leftover ground meat.
Store raw and cooked foods separately.
Store raw meat on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator when thawing.

Contact Judy Morgan, RD at Nutricopia for more information. Review your Nutricopia (HM Composite) Dietetic Services Policy and Procedure Manual section 5 for complete safe meat preparation procedures.

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