That approach sounds wrong to me: bristles breaking off is pretty rare already, and inspecting the barbecue for bristles is only as good as your ability to pay

That approach sounds wrong to me: bristles breaking off is pretty rare already, and inspecting the barbecue for bristles is only as good as your ability to pay attention while doing it, while not finding anything most of the time. People often overestimate their ability to pay attention, because the cost of missing something is usually low and the consequences manageable. People's intuition regarding very rare events is also pretty bad in general. So attention would be the limiting factor, which is why it still seems unsafe. Also, I felt like the goal is to avoid having a portion of your intestine removed, not really so much to save time.