In food safety study, 25% of participants con

In a examine geared toward assessing the affect of washing poultry on kitchen contamination, researchers discovered that greater than 1 / 4 of examine individuals contaminated salad with uncooked poultry – together with many examine individuals who didn’t wash the poultry. The examine highlights the significance of hand-washing and cleansing and sanitizing the kitchen so as to scale back the danger of foodborne sickness when cooking at house.

Washing uncooked poultry isn’t beneficial, because of issues about inadvertently contaminating different meals and surfaces – and growing the danger of foodborne sickness.

“We needed to know what impact an academic intervention would have on getting folks to cease washing poultry earlier than cooking, and what impact any ensuing change in habits might need on decreasing contamination within the kitchen,” says Ellen Shumaker, corresponding creator of the examine and an extension affiliate at North Carolina State College. “We additionally needed to get a greater concept of how, if in any respect, washing poultry really led to elevated contamination within the kitchen.”

For the examine, researchers recruited 300 house cooks who stated they washed poultry earlier than cooking it. The researchers despatched meals security data to 142 of the examine individuals by way of e-mail, outlining risk-reduction efforts – together with the advice to not wash uncooked poultry throughout meals preparation. The remaining 158 examine individuals didn’t obtain the training intervention.

All 300 examine individuals had been then invited to check kitchens geared up with video cameras that filmed meal preparation. Contributors had been requested to prepare dinner hen thighs and put together a salad. After making ready the hen thighs, however earlier than placing the hen within the oven, individuals had been known as out of the kitchen to conduct a brief interview. Contributors had been then despatched again into the kitchen to prepare dinner the hen thighs, put together the salad, and clear the kitchen as they’d at house.

What the examine individuals didn’t know was that the hen thighs had been inoculated with a innocent pressure of micro organism, which the researchers would be capable to detect. This allowed researchers to swab surfaces within the kitchen to see whether or not any cross-contamination occurred in the course of the meals preparation and cooking course of.

When examine individuals left the kitchen to conduct the interview, researchers swabbed the kitchen to determine any potential contamination. This course of was repeated after every participant had accomplished cooking the meal and cleaned the kitchen. The ready salad was additionally examined for potential contamination.

Ninety-three % of the individuals who obtained the intervention didn’t wash the hen, as in comparison with 39% of the individuals who didn’t obtain the intervention.

Nonetheless, the researchers had been shocked to see that individuals who did wash the hen and individuals who didn’t wash the hen had comparable ranges of contamination from the uncooked hen of their ready salads.

So what provides?

“We expect the salad contamination stems from folks doing a poor job of washing their fingers after dealing with the uncooked hen, and/or doing a poor job of sanitizing the sink and surrounding surfaces earlier than rinsing or dealing with the salad,” Shumaker says.

“No matter whether or not folks washed their hen, the kitchen sinks grew to become contaminated by the uncooked hen, whereas there was comparatively little contamination of close by counters,” Shumaker says. “This was just a little stunning, because the typical knowledge had been that the danger related to washing hen was as a result of water would splash off of the hen and contaminate surrounding surfaces. As a substitute, the sink itself was changing into contaminated, even when the hen wasn’t being washed.

“Washing the hen remains to be not a good suggestion, however this examine demonstrates the necessity to give attention to stopping contamination of sinks and emphasizing the significance of hand-washing and cleansing and sanitizing surfaces.”

The paper, “Observational Study of the Impact of a Food Safety Intervention on Consumer Poultry Washing,” is printed within the Journal of Meals Safety. The paper was co-authored by Margaret Kirchner, a former graduate pupil at NC State; Lisa Shelley, a analysis scholar at NC State; Rebecca Goulter, a analysis affiliate at NC State; Lydia Goodson, a former analysis technician at NC State; Sheryl Cates, of RTI Worldwide; Christopher Bernstein, of the Client Monetary Safety Bureau; and Aaron Lavallee, of the U.S. Division of Agriculture’s Meals Security and Inspection Service (FSIS).

The work was performed with assist from FSIS.

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