Modernist-Cuisine-Vol.-1-Small

3
For more on time-and- temperature reductions
of pathogen populations, see Bacterial Death,
page 148.
cooking it. This assertion is scientifically incorrect:
E. coli is very easy to kill with heat.
Evidently the officials decided that oversimplifying
the public message was better than telling
the truth. They may have feared that if people
cooked contaminated spinach to make it safe to
eat, but either didn’t cook it sufficiently or crosscontaminated
other food or kitchen surfaces in the
process, more fatalities would result. The authorities
must have decided that the benefits of avoiding
multiple accidental deaths far outweighed the
costs of simply tossing out all spinach. In this case
they probably were right to make that decision.
The cost of some spinach is small compared to the
misery and expense of hospitalization.
Oversimplifying for the sake of public safety is
a very reasonable thing to do in the midst of an
outbreak or other health crisis. It may well have
saved lives to lie to the public and announce things
that, strictly speaking, are false (for example, that
you can’t kill E. coli with heat).
However, outside of a crisis situation, there is
a pervasive danger that this philosophy leads to
“dumbing down,” oversimplifying, or fabricating
food safety information. It is very easy for public
health officials to adopt the paternalistic attitude
that they can make scientifically incorrect
statements with impunity, even in situations in
which the balance of risks is nothing like that
which occurs during a crisis. Who pushes back
against nonsensical rules? The reality is that the
only groups that push back are those that have
political clout.
Because of this approach, culinary professionals
and casual cooks alike have been grossly misled
about a wide range of food safety issues and are
often subjected to distorted, incomplete, or
contradictory rules. When a political interest
group exists, it is that group’s opinion, rather than
science, that shapes the rules. But when there is no
political force to push back, the rules can be
overstated and excessive.
Consider the overstated risk of exposure to
Trichinella, which has led to ridiculously excessive
recommendations for cooking pork (see Misconceptions
About Pork, page 179). This overkill is
just one of many such examples. Cooking standards
for chicken, fish, and eggs, as well as rules
about raw milk cheeses, all provide examples of
inconsistent, excessive, or illogical standards. To
a public health official, mandating that pork chops
or chicken breasts be dry and overcooked makes
sense if it keeps even one person from getting sick.
In this calculus, one less case of foodborne illness
is worth millions of ruined chops or breasts.
That attitude becomes harder to defend, however,
if you accept that overcooking food comes at
a cost. A chef’s livelihood may depend on producing
the best taste and texture for customers. Home
cooks who love food want it to taste the very best
that it can. To a person who cares about the quality
of foodor who makes a living based on itexcessive
food safety standards don’t come cheap.
A balance must be struck between the risk of
foodborne illness and the desire for palatable food.
In cases such as those of pork and chicken, misleading
the public about a rarely occurring scenario
(while ignoring other, larger risks) arguably
offers little protection and comes at the cost of
millions of unnecessarily awful meals.
Culture Clash
The excessive restrictions on cooking pork didn’t
come out of nowhere. In decades past, pork was
intrinsically less safe than other meats because of
muscle infiltration by Trichinella and surface
contamination from fecal-borne pathogens like
Salmonella and Clostridium perfringens. As a result,
people learned to tolerate overcooked pork, and
farms raised pigs with increasing amounts of
fatfar more fat than is typical in the wild ancestors
of pigs such as wild boar. The extra fat helped
to keep the meat moist when it was overcooked.
Since then, research has sharpened our understanding
of pork-associated pathogens, and
producers have vastly reduced the risk of contamination
through preventive practices on the farm
and in meat-processing facilities. Eventually the
FDA relaxed the cooking requirements for pork;
they are now no different than those for other
meats. The irony is that few people noticed
culinary professionals and cookbook authors
included. Government information aimed at
consumers from both the USDA and the FDA
continued to promote excessive cooking standards
for pork. Amazingly, even pork industry groups
continued to do the same thing.
After decades of consuming overcooked pork
by necessity, the American public has little
appetite for rare pork; it isn’t considered traditional.
With a lack of cultural pressure or agitation
for change by industry groups, the new standards
are largely ignored, and many new publications
leave the old cooking recommendations intact.
Clearly, cultural and political factors impinge
on decisions about food safety. If you doubt that,
note the contrast between the standards applied to
pork and those applied to beef. Many people love
rare steak or raw beef served as carpaccio or steak
tartare, and in the United States alone, millions of
people safely eat beef products, whether raw, rare,
or well-done. Beef is part of the national culture,
and any attempt to outlaw rare or raw steak in the
United States would face an immense cultural and
political backlash from both the consumers and
the producers of beef.
Millions of servings of rare beef steak or
completely raw steak tartare or carpaccio are
T H E POLITICS OF
Busting the Seasonal Ban on Oysters
A tussle between government officials and oyster enthusiasts
in 2009 illustrates how pressure from industry and
political constituencies can influence food safety rules. In
the fall of that year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) announced plans to ban the sale of raw oysters
harvested from the Gulf of Mexico between April and
October. In those warm months, coastal waters are more
likely to carry Vibrio vulnificus, a pathogen that can kill
people who eat infected oysters. About 15 people die that
way each year.
Vibrio can be treated by pasteurization and other antimicrobial
measures, but industry advocates complained that the
treatments are too expensive and ruin the taste and texture of
fresh, raw oysters. Suppliers and consumers from Florida to
Louisiana fiercely opposed the FDA plan, which would have
restricted the sale of oysters to only the treated type during the
seasonal ban. The protestors claimed a $500-million economy
was at stake, and the agency quickly backed down, saying it
would put the ban on hold until it had considered further
studies on the cost and feasibility of antimicrobial treatments.
But by spring of the following year Gulf fishermen had worse
woes to contend with, as millions of gallons of oil spewing
from a damaged offshore drilling rig contaminated coastal
waters and put many shellfish beds off-limits.
served every day, so if that meat were inherently
dangerous, we’d certainly know by now. Scientific
investigation has confirmed the practice is reasonably
safealmost invariably, muscle interiors are
sterile and pathogen-free. That’s true for any meat,
actually, but only beef is singled out by the FDA.
The cultural significance of eating raw and rare
beef, as much as the science, accounts for the
FDA’s leniency in allowing beef steak to be served
at any internal temperature.
Cultural and political factors also explain why
cheese made from raw milk is considered safe in
France yet viewed with great skepticism in the
United States. Traditional cheese-making techniques,
used correctly and with proper quality
controls, eliminate pathogens without the need for
milk pasteurization. Millions of people safely
consume raw milk cheese in France, and any call
to ban such a fundamental part of French culture
170 VOLUME 1 · HISTORY AND FUNDAMENTALS
FOOD SAFETY 171