29 ms·

Chicken Checker – See how often salmonella was found at meat processing plants

133 points by danso 5y ago

eneumann 5y ago
I had no idea there were that many salmonella infections in the US every year. Could irradiation be a solution? I know it is sometimes used on fruits and vegetables (wish it was used more, tbh).
- coob 5y ago
  In the US, chickens are washed in a chlorine solution. This is not allowed in UK/EU, as it's believed it's better to fix the problem at source and that no-one will bother to do that if there's end-bleaching.
  - hammock 5y ago
    Is this why chicken should be rinsed, to remove the chlorine?
    - gruez 5y ago
      You shouldn't rinse chicken, period. https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2019/08/20/washing-raw-poultry-our-science-your-choice https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2019/08/20/washing... also, AFAIK people rinse off meat to "get rid of the blood/slime", not to get rid of the chroline smell. Presumably they do a good enough job rinsing off the chlorine that it doesn't smell like pool water by the time it hits store shelves.
      - azinman2 5y ago
        According to that linked article, it’s because ppl believe it’ll “clean” the raw chicken making it safer (which seems insane to me unless you’re using soap.. which would be a weird thing to do with meat). As long as you continue treating everything as if it’s still lined with bacteria, why not wash?
        hammock 5y ago
        >As long as you continue treating everything as if it’s still lined with bacteria, why not wash? Exactly. I'm not a least-common-denominator that these public health recommendations cater to. Give me the real info please. I am skeptical that they would rinse the chlorine off of the chicken at the factory. That seems like an extra step adding not only cost but risk of a bacterial bloom occurring between the factory and the store/home.
    - rsynnott 5y ago
      Chicken shouldn't be rinsed; it's a weirdly persistent myth, not actual safety advice. I live in a non-chlorinated-poultry country, and there are still dept of health ads every Christmas warning people not to attempt to rinse turkeys; wherever the idea came from it probably wasn't chlorination.
      - hammock 5y ago
        The warning not to rinse turkeys is probably because you don't want a wet bird to go into a deep fryer, that is how explosions happen. I would not expect a health agency, which requires processors to use a chlorine rinse that presumably the agency approves as "safe and healthy", to say that your chicken should be rinsed of any excess chlorine before cooking. They think the amount of chlorine is safe and want you to believe so as well. And I know people rinse chicken for reasons other than what I am suggesting. However I am still looking for a good answer to whether there is chlorine residue on chicken that can be removed by rinsing in the home. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough at first.
        cyberpunk 5y ago
        Woah hang-on there. People deep fry christmas turkeys? Eeek.
        rootusrootus 5y ago
        It's pretty tasty. I just did one for the first time a couple weeks ago (as a test so I'd understand the process and timing a little better before Thanksgiving). I don't know if it's necessarily that much better than a good oven roasting, but I did a 14 pound turkey in 45 minutes.
        QuercusMax 5y ago
        It's not as bizarre as it sounds. They're not breaded, simply dinked into hot oil and deep-fried for half an hour or so. If you're not an idiot and follow basic precautions it's a pretty reasonable way to do things, as it's much quicker than roasting for multiple hours. Basic precautions include: * Do it outside away from structures * Keep a fire extinguisher handy * Make sure there's no ice in the bird * Measure the displacement of the bird (by filling your pot with water), and add the appropriate amount of oil * Heat the oil up to 250, then add the bird. Don't let the temp get over 350. I have a propane stove I use for making beer; it's often sold as a turkey fryer stove
  - EliRivers 5y ago
    Don't you worry about that, BoJo is on the case. He'll get the UK onto chlorine washed chicken soon enough!
    - CodeGlitch 5y ago
      Citation needed
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    > as it's believed it's better to fix the problem at source Well, there are two other problems: - There's rather limited evidence that the chlorine thing is particularly effective for removing surface bacteria. - Chicken meat can and commonly does harbour bacteria in the interior.
- ssklash 5y ago
  Take a look at how chickens/farmed animals in general are housed before before being "processed". Turns out it's cheaper to pump the animals full of antibiotics and wash the resulting meat with chemicals afterwards than to house them in clean and sanitary conditions. The EU/UK at least recognize how terrible this is, so they don't allow US meat that is handled this way.
  - joelthelion 5y ago
    Do we actually have fewer infections in Europe?
    - ane 5y ago
      Yes, considerably. > ”In the EU, over 91,000 salmonellosis cases are reported each year” https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/salmonella https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/salmonella And in the US, from the article: > ” Salmonella hospitalizes and kills more people in the U.S. than any other foodborne pathogen, with about 1.35 million illnesses, 26,500 hospitalizations and more than 400 deaths each year.” US population is 330 million, EU is about 450 million. The difference in salmonellosis prevalence is huge.
    - blippe 5y ago
      The rate of infections are very diverse in Europe. In Scandinavia it is extremely low, they test the chickens several times during their lifetime and kills the whole flock if any of them is contaminated. Until they joined the EU all eggs were "washed" which removed other unwanted pathogens. The EU forced them to accept unwashed eggs and allowed them for the time being to continue selling washed eggs. Most other countries does not use such draconian methods to their farming and the washing of eggs removes a thin membrane which gives some protection from salmonella travelling between the eggs.
  - abfan1127 5y ago
    chickens are not allowed antibiotics by law. That's the funny part of "our chicken is raised without antibiotics" advertising.
- imglorp 5y ago
  Good idea. Unfortunately it would need a better name because people panic hearing the R word, perhaps Green Washed (tm) for your protection [washed in gamma rays, that is]. On a related note, there may also be a huge issue with Prion diseases in the food supply but the USDA is not testing extensively for it. We just don't know and it has a decades-long incubation period. Irradiation may not be an option.
  - tata71 5y ago
    Uh. Is this real?
    - imglorp 5y ago
      https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalhealth/nvap/NVAP-Reference-Guide/Control-and-Eradication/Bovine-Spongiform-Encephalopathy https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalhealth/nvap/...
  - eneumann 5y ago
    Are prions linked to irradiated food? They are terrifying but I know very little about them.
    - imglorp 5y ago
      I only mentioned prions/BSE because the USDA is tasked with testing meat for safety, but their mission in practice tends to lean towards protection of producers and not consumers. There has been some controversy over how much to test and when. I was looking for evidence that irradiation can neutralize prions (along with viruses and bacteria), not cause them.
- notJim 5y ago
  There is a vaccine for salmonella. I might be wrong, but I believe it is mandated in other countries, but not in the US. Notably, California requires it for chickens that lay eggs, which means most eggs on the West Coast are vaccinated against salmonella.
specialp 5y ago
One should presume that all chicken has dangerous bacterial infections since most of them do [1]. Cook all chicken to 170 no matter what. [1] https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/consumer-reports-finds-71-percent-of-store-bought-chicken-contains-harmful-bacteria/ https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/consumer-...
- phonypc 5y ago
  Overkill. Most health agencies recommend 165°, and that's already got a big margin of safety on it. I aim for 150° these days, and even that's mostly because I like the texture there. 140° is perfectly safe if you can hold it there for a while, like if you're doing sous vide.
  - sharkweek 5y ago
    Second vote for sous vide for chicken, absolutely the juiciest chicken I’ve ever had. One warning to a first-timer though is if you’re used to baked or grilled chicken the texture of sous vide is going to feel undercooked. One or two bites though and you get used to it because of how good it is.
  - Retric 5y ago
    The point of safety margins is the risk reward ratio is heavily weighted in one direction. 150 is flat out not worth the risk from a public health standpoint. Sous vide is nowhere near as safe as many assume. Many spores and some pathogens can survive the process and people with compromised immune systems should seriously avoid eating such food especially if it’s been refrigerated before consumption.
    - phonypc 5y ago
      >150 is flat out not worth the risk from a public health standpoint. It's not worth the risk for public health agencies to recommend 150°, that I can agree on. Too much room for inexperienced cooks to make an error. But chicken held at 150° for a few minutes (which is hard to avoid in most scenarios) is no less safe than the hypothetical "165° for an instant" scenario.
powersnail 5y ago
I always treat chicken as if it's covered with bacteria. Separate board, separate knife, hand washing with soap between handling, and cooking it all the way through. All items that touched the chicken goes immediately into the dish washer after use.
- foobiekr 5y ago
  Do you not hand wash while cooking raw beef?
  - powersnail 5y ago
    Less rigorously than when I'm handling chicken. Every time I touch chicken, I immediately go to the sink and start a 20 second hand washing routine. The risk is at an entirely different level.
    - animal_spirits 5y ago
      Why do you continue to eat this food if you have to mentally accept that it's this dangerous to eat? This would drain me considerably if I had to do this routine for eating peppers and broccoli.
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        It’s not dangerous to eat, it’s risky if not prepared properly. Similarly you need to be very careful with vegetables like scallions, some leafy greens, etc. Many people assume that they don’t need to wash bagged spinach, for example.
        kaishiro 5y ago
        I think it's a little unfair to chalk this up to an assumption. Most of the bagged spinach that I can purchase at the supermarket comes labeled as "Washed & Ready to Eat" [1]. Whether that's true or not - and whether you prefer to wash your spinach anyway - is of course up to you. But it's explicitly labeled as safe. [1] - http://t0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcR5UDimbyF_W_fUOKgvk4xwsZUgeHXS5SWRMGicJuY-5COT720CifkxO4SmseKLNO447Zk51D5iJFELCS3OBPOY5UnsiB0UYw&usqp=CAY http://t0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcR5UDimbyF_W_fUOKg...
mrVentures 5y ago
Never a bad time to go vegan.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  Or buy your meat locally and get pasture raised animals, which actually is a carbon REDUCING activity. Unlike quite a bit of industrial farming including growing most vegan staples.
  - seanwilson 5y ago
    > Or buy your meat locally and get pasture raised animals, which actually is a carbon REDUCING activity. Are you sure? https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/13/746576239/is-grass-fed-beef-really-better-for-the-planet-heres-the-science https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/13/746576239/is... "A number of past studies have found lower greenhouse gas emissions associated with the feedlot system. One reason is that grass-fed cows gain weight more slowly, so they produce more methane (mostly in the form of belches) over their longer lifespans." https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local "‘Eating local’ is a recommendation you hear often – even from prominent sources, including the United Nations. While it might make sense intuitively – after all, transport does lead to emissions – it is one of the most misguided pieces of advice. Eating locally would only have a significant impact if transport was responsible for a large share of food’s final carbon footprint. For most foods, this is not the case. GHG emissions from transportation make up a very small amount of the emissions from food and what you eat is far more important than where your food traveled from." > Unlike quite a bit of industrial farming including growing most vegan staples. Like what? https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local "Many of the foods people assume to come by air are actually transported by boat – avocados and almonds are prime examples. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO2eq in transport emissions. This is only around 8% of avocados’ total footprint. Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products."
    - 5y ago
nemetroid 5y ago
In Sweden, one single case of salmonella was found in 2020 (when sampling before slaughter). All animals in the population it came from were killed and destroyed, and none of them made it to food stores. The same stringency is applied to egg production. https://svenskfagel.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/arsrapport-2020-smittskydd-popular-slutlig.pdf https://svenskfagel.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/arsrapport...
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  The real problem is not in detection or distribution. It is in the production methods. Here in Norway chickens are raised in batches and the sheds are cleaned between batches, see https://www.matprat.no/artikler/matproduksjon/hvordan-lever-norsk-kylling/ https://www.matprat.no/artikler/matproduksjon/hvordan-lever-.... But in the US it seems that chickens are raised in continuous production facilities where chicks go in one end and grown chickens come out the other. This method pretty much guarantees that infections can spread. Perhaps someone in possession of the details can conform, clarify, or correct.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    This stuff isn’t effectively regulated in the US, so the answer to “Which part of the process is broken?” is “yes”. Chicken raising is problematic, as is the slaughterhouse environment where they are processed.
- uhtred 5y ago
  That's fucking tragic. Imagine killing an entire population of humans because some of them were sick. Sadly most people will read that and just think "what a waste of good food". In 500 years humans will be absolutely disgusted by the way we behaved towards other animals in current times.
  - pdabbadabba 5y ago
    I agree that it's sad. But just wait until you find out what happened to all the other chickens...
Meph504 5y ago
I generally find propublica makes really interesting lookups with the worse method for searching, why would you not offer zip code search, or by state. Instead I have to know the city name or the P-code. Just always feels like a missed opportunity to provide actual meaningful data.
- gruez 5y ago
  It sort of makes sense though. The data is available at a plant level, but you can't necessarily tie a particular zip code to a particular processing plant, since supply chain/availability changes.
- schwanksta 5y ago
  As others have said, it does not really make sense to search by ZIP code for most consumers. Your chicken could come from anywhere. This is meant to check the processor for a specific package of chicken.
  - Meph504 5y ago
    The site is specifically by p-code, company, or processor location. But only by single location, I'm not sure if you've been near a chicken processing plant, but they are very often clustered together, shockingly near where an abundance of commercial chicken farms are, so knowing the percentage chance by an area can be very useful. I don't think my perspective and interest seem to be aligning with most people commenting here. I'm not concerned about if a random package of chicken is OK, I'm concerned about a cluster of processors.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  Except you can search by state? Just type in the state abbreviation.
  - Meph504 5y ago
    Have you tried this, as it seeming does not work at All. Type in LA you get a single facility in Delaware
bob229 5y ago
Animal agriculture is pure evil
whaas 5y ago
Impressive tool. Supply-chain transparency is a must-have (and very doable).
nonameking2026 5y ago
Have you taken your salmonella vaccine yet ?
altrus 5y ago
TLDR; If you're looking to reduce the risk of contamination, consider purchasing whole chickens or, at least, skin-on, bone-in, cuts. This is because the risk is substantially higher if you purchase skinless or deboned chicken - most contamination is on the surface of the chicken, and is easily killed during cooking. However, during processing, the tooling used to debone or deskin the chicken may get contaminated, and necessarily pierces the flesh of the meat. This tooling isn't usually disinfected between chickens (cost prohibitive). As a result, if one of the birds has surface contamination, this contamination will remain on the outside of the instrument, grow, and subsequently infect the inside of all the other birds. This is important, because direct heat is actually pretty good at killing bacteria. However, if the bacteria are able to penetrate to the inside of the chicken, there's a substantially greater likelihood that the temperature (and duration) on the inside of the chicken are insufficient to kill disease causing bacteria. Note: The overall idea is to recognize that surface bacterial contamination can be killed with sufficient temperature over a sufficient duration of time, recognizing that the lowest overall temperature will be in the thickest part of the meat, and ensuring that there isn't a mechanical mechanism that will introduce contamination in that area.
eddanger 5y ago
We often fear salmonella in meat but our blindspot is often salmonella in salad and veggies. Be careful out there! https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/outbreaks-active.html https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/outbreaks-active.html

133 points by danso 5y ago

I had no idea there were that many salmonella infections in the US every year. Could irradiation be a solution? I know it is sometimes used on fruits and vegetables (wish it was used more, tbh).

coob 5y ago
In the US, chickens are washed in a chlorine solution. This is not allowed in UK/EU, as it's believed it's better to fix the problem at source and that no-one will bother to do that if there's end-bleaching.
- hammock 5y ago
  Is this why chicken should be rinsed, to remove the chlorine?
  - gruez 5y ago
    You shouldn't rinse chicken, period. https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2019/08/20/washing-raw-poultry-our-science-your-choice https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2019/08/20/washing... also, AFAIK people rinse off meat to "get rid of the blood/slime", not to get rid of the chroline smell. Presumably they do a good enough job rinsing off the chlorine that it doesn't smell like pool water by the time it hits store shelves.
    - azinman2 5y ago
      According to that linked article, it’s because ppl believe it’ll “clean” the raw chicken making it safer (which seems insane to me unless you’re using soap.. which would be a weird thing to do with meat). As long as you continue treating everything as if it’s still lined with bacteria, why not wash?
      - hammock 5y ago
        >As long as you continue treating everything as if it’s still lined with bacteria, why not wash? Exactly. I'm not a least-common-denominator that these public health recommendations cater to. Give me the real info please. I am skeptical that they would rinse the chlorine off of the chicken at the factory. That seems like an extra step adding not only cost but risk of a bacterial bloom occurring between the factory and the store/home.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    Chicken shouldn't be rinsed; it's a weirdly persistent myth, not actual safety advice. I live in a non-chlorinated-poultry country, and there are still dept of health ads every Christmas warning people not to attempt to rinse turkeys; wherever the idea came from it probably wasn't chlorination.
    - hammock 5y ago
      The warning not to rinse turkeys is probably because you don't want a wet bird to go into a deep fryer, that is how explosions happen. I would not expect a health agency, which requires processors to use a chlorine rinse that presumably the agency approves as "safe and healthy", to say that your chicken should be rinsed of any excess chlorine before cooking. They think the amount of chlorine is safe and want you to believe so as well. And I know people rinse chicken for reasons other than what I am suggesting. However I am still looking for a good answer to whether there is chlorine residue on chicken that can be removed by rinsing in the home. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough at first.
      - cyberpunk 5y ago
        Woah hang-on there. People deep fry christmas turkeys? Eeek.
        rootusrootus 5y ago
        It's pretty tasty. I just did one for the first time a couple weeks ago (as a test so I'd understand the process and timing a little better before Thanksgiving). I don't know if it's necessarily that much better than a good oven roasting, but I did a 14 pound turkey in 45 minutes.
        QuercusMax 5y ago
        It's not as bizarre as it sounds. They're not breaded, simply dinked into hot oil and deep-fried for half an hour or so. If you're not an idiot and follow basic precautions it's a pretty reasonable way to do things, as it's much quicker than roasting for multiple hours. Basic precautions include: * Do it outside away from structures * Keep a fire extinguisher handy * Make sure there's no ice in the bird * Measure the displacement of the bird (by filling your pot with water), and add the appropriate amount of oil * Heat the oil up to 250, then add the bird. Don't let the temp get over 350. I have a propane stove I use for making beer; it's often sold as a turkey fryer stove
- EliRivers 5y ago
  Don't you worry about that, BoJo is on the case. He'll get the UK onto chlorine washed chicken soon enough!
  - CodeGlitch 5y ago
    Citation needed
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > as it's believed it's better to fix the problem at source Well, there are two other problems: - There's rather limited evidence that the chlorine thing is particularly effective for removing surface bacteria. - Chicken meat can and commonly does harbour bacteria in the interior.
ssklash 5y ago
Take a look at how chickens/farmed animals in general are housed before before being "processed". Turns out it's cheaper to pump the animals full of antibiotics and wash the resulting meat with chemicals afterwards than to house them in clean and sanitary conditions. The EU/UK at least recognize how terrible this is, so they don't allow US meat that is handled this way.
- joelthelion 5y ago
  Do we actually have fewer infections in Europe?
  - ane 5y ago
    Yes, considerably. > ”In the EU, over 91,000 salmonellosis cases are reported each year” https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/salmonella https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/salmonella And in the US, from the article: > ” Salmonella hospitalizes and kills more people in the U.S. than any other foodborne pathogen, with about 1.35 million illnesses, 26,500 hospitalizations and more than 400 deaths each year.” US population is 330 million, EU is about 450 million. The difference in salmonellosis prevalence is huge.
  - blippe 5y ago
    The rate of infections are very diverse in Europe. In Scandinavia it is extremely low, they test the chickens several times during their lifetime and kills the whole flock if any of them is contaminated. Until they joined the EU all eggs were "washed" which removed other unwanted pathogens. The EU forced them to accept unwashed eggs and allowed them for the time being to continue selling washed eggs. Most other countries does not use such draconian methods to their farming and the washing of eggs removes a thin membrane which gives some protection from salmonella travelling between the eggs.
- abfan1127 5y ago
  chickens are not allowed antibiotics by law. That's the funny part of "our chicken is raised without antibiotics" advertising.
imglorp 5y ago
Good idea. Unfortunately it would need a better name because people panic hearing the R word, perhaps Green Washed (tm) for your protection [washed in gamma rays, that is]. On a related note, there may also be a huge issue with Prion diseases in the food supply but the USDA is not testing extensively for it. We just don't know and it has a decades-long incubation period. Irradiation may not be an option.
- tata71 5y ago
  Uh. Is this real?
  - imglorp 5y ago
    https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalhealth/nvap/NVAP-Reference-Guide/Control-and-Eradication/Bovine-Spongiform-Encephalopathy https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalhealth/nvap/...
- eneumann 5y ago
  Are prions linked to irradiated food? They are terrifying but I know very little about them.
  - imglorp 5y ago
    I only mentioned prions/BSE because the USDA is tasked with testing meat for safety, but their mission in practice tends to lean towards protection of producers and not consumers. There has been some controversy over how much to test and when. I was looking for evidence that irradiation can neutralize prions (along with viruses and bacteria), not cause them.
notJim 5y ago
There is a vaccine for salmonella. I might be wrong, but I believe it is mandated in other countries, but not in the US. Notably, California requires it for chickens that lay eggs, which means most eggs on the West Coast are vaccinated against salmonella.

specialp 5y ago

One should presume that all chicken has dangerous bacterial infections since most of them do [1]. Cook all chicken to 170 no matter what. [1] https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/consumer-reports-finds-71-percent-of-store-bought-chicken-contains-harmful-bacteria/ https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/consumer-...

phonypc 5y ago
Overkill. Most health agencies recommend 165°, and that's already got a big margin of safety on it. I aim for 150° these days, and even that's mostly because I like the texture there. 140° is perfectly safe if you can hold it there for a while, like if you're doing sous vide.
- sharkweek 5y ago
  Second vote for sous vide for chicken, absolutely the juiciest chicken I’ve ever had. One warning to a first-timer though is if you’re used to baked or grilled chicken the texture of sous vide is going to feel undercooked. One or two bites though and you get used to it because of how good it is.
- Retric 5y ago
  The point of safety margins is the risk reward ratio is heavily weighted in one direction. 150 is flat out not worth the risk from a public health standpoint. Sous vide is nowhere near as safe as many assume. Many spores and some pathogens can survive the process and people with compromised immune systems should seriously avoid eating such food especially if it’s been refrigerated before consumption.
  - phonypc 5y ago
    >150 is flat out not worth the risk from a public health standpoint. It's not worth the risk for public health agencies to recommend 150°, that I can agree on. Too much room for inexperienced cooks to make an error. But chicken held at 150° for a few minutes (which is hard to avoid in most scenarios) is no less safe than the hypothetical "165° for an instant" scenario.

powersnail 5y ago

I always treat chicken as if it's covered with bacteria. Separate board, separate knife, hand washing with soap between handling, and cooking it all the way through. All items that touched the chicken goes immediately into the dish washer after use.

foobiekr 5y ago
Do you not hand wash while cooking raw beef?
- powersnail 5y ago
  Less rigorously than when I'm handling chicken. Every time I touch chicken, I immediately go to the sink and start a 20 second hand washing routine. The risk is at an entirely different level.
  - animal_spirits 5y ago
    Why do you continue to eat this food if you have to mentally accept that it's this dangerous to eat? This would drain me considerably if I had to do this routine for eating peppers and broccoli.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      It’s not dangerous to eat, it’s risky if not prepared properly. Similarly you need to be very careful with vegetables like scallions, some leafy greens, etc. Many people assume that they don’t need to wash bagged spinach, for example.
      - kaishiro 5y ago
        I think it's a little unfair to chalk this up to an assumption. Most of the bagged spinach that I can purchase at the supermarket comes labeled as "Washed & Ready to Eat" [1]. Whether that's true or not - and whether you prefer to wash your spinach anyway - is of course up to you. But it's explicitly labeled as safe. [1] - http://t0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcR5UDimbyF_W_fUOKgvk4xwsZUgeHXS5SWRMGicJuY-5COT720CifkxO4SmseKLNO447Zk51D5iJFELCS3OBPOY5UnsiB0UYw&usqp=CAY http://t0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcR5UDimbyF_W_fUOKg...

mrVentures 5y ago

Never a bad time to go vegan.

ed25519FUUU 5y ago
Or buy your meat locally and get pasture raised animals, which actually is a carbon REDUCING activity. Unlike quite a bit of industrial farming including growing most vegan staples.
- seanwilson 5y ago
  > Or buy your meat locally and get pasture raised animals, which actually is a carbon REDUCING activity. Are you sure? https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/13/746576239/is-grass-fed-beef-really-better-for-the-planet-heres-the-science https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/13/746576239/is... "A number of past studies have found lower greenhouse gas emissions associated with the feedlot system. One reason is that grass-fed cows gain weight more slowly, so they produce more methane (mostly in the form of belches) over their longer lifespans." https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local "‘Eating local’ is a recommendation you hear often – even from prominent sources, including the United Nations. While it might make sense intuitively – after all, transport does lead to emissions – it is one of the most misguided pieces of advice. Eating locally would only have a significant impact if transport was responsible for a large share of food’s final carbon footprint. For most foods, this is not the case. GHG emissions from transportation make up a very small amount of the emissions from food and what you eat is far more important than where your food traveled from." > Unlike quite a bit of industrial farming including growing most vegan staples. Like what? https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local "Many of the foods people assume to come by air are actually transported by boat – avocados and almonds are prime examples. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO2eq in transport emissions. This is only around 8% of avocados’ total footprint. Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products."
  - 5y ago

nemetroid 5y ago

In Sweden, one single case of salmonella was found in 2020 (when sampling before slaughter). All animals in the population it came from were killed and destroyed, and none of them made it to food stores. The same stringency is applied to egg production. https://svenskfagel.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/arsrapport-2020-smittskydd-popular-slutlig.pdf https://svenskfagel.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/arsrapport...

kwhitefoot 5y ago
The real problem is not in detection or distribution. It is in the production methods. Here in Norway chickens are raised in batches and the sheds are cleaned between batches, see https://www.matprat.no/artikler/matproduksjon/hvordan-lever-norsk-kylling/ https://www.matprat.no/artikler/matproduksjon/hvordan-lever-.... But in the US it seems that chickens are raised in continuous production facilities where chicks go in one end and grown chickens come out the other. This method pretty much guarantees that infections can spread. Perhaps someone in possession of the details can conform, clarify, or correct.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  This stuff isn’t effectively regulated in the US, so the answer to “Which part of the process is broken?” is “yes”. Chicken raising is problematic, as is the slaughterhouse environment where they are processed.
uhtred 5y ago
That's fucking tragic. Imagine killing an entire population of humans because some of them were sick. Sadly most people will read that and just think "what a waste of good food". In 500 years humans will be absolutely disgusted by the way we behaved towards other animals in current times.
- pdabbadabba 5y ago
  I agree that it's sad. But just wait until you find out what happened to all the other chickens...

Meph504 5y ago

I generally find propublica makes really interesting lookups with the worse method for searching, why would you not offer zip code search, or by state. Instead I have to know the city name or the P-code. Just always feels like a missed opportunity to provide actual meaningful data.

gruez 5y ago
It sort of makes sense though. The data is available at a plant level, but you can't necessarily tie a particular zip code to a particular processing plant, since supply chain/availability changes.
schwanksta 5y ago
As others have said, it does not really make sense to search by ZIP code for most consumers. Your chicken could come from anywhere. This is meant to check the processor for a specific package of chicken.
- Meph504 5y ago
  The site is specifically by p-code, company, or processor location. But only by single location, I'm not sure if you've been near a chicken processing plant, but they are very often clustered together, shockingly near where an abundance of commercial chicken farms are, so knowing the percentage chance by an area can be very useful. I don't think my perspective and interest seem to be aligning with most people commenting here. I'm not concerned about if a random package of chicken is OK, I'm concerned about a cluster of processors.
BoorishBears 5y ago
Except you can search by state? Just type in the state abbreviation.
- Meph504 5y ago
  Have you tried this, as it seeming does not work at All. Type in LA you get a single facility in Delaware

bob229 5y ago

Animal agriculture is pure evil

whaas 5y ago

Impressive tool. Supply-chain transparency is a must-have (and very doable).

nonameking2026 5y ago

Have you taken your salmonella vaccine yet ?

altrus 5y ago

TLDR; If you're looking to reduce the risk of contamination, consider purchasing whole chickens or, at least, skin-on, bone-in, cuts. This is because the risk is substantially higher if you purchase skinless or deboned chicken - most contamination is on the surface of the chicken, and is easily killed during cooking. However, during processing, the tooling used to debone or deskin the chicken may get contaminated, and necessarily pierces the flesh of the meat. This tooling isn't usually disinfected between chickens (cost prohibitive). As a result, if one of the birds has surface contamination, this contamination will remain on the outside of the instrument, grow, and subsequently infect the inside of all the other birds. This is important, because direct heat is actually pretty good at killing bacteria. However, if the bacteria are able to penetrate to the inside of the chicken, there's a substantially greater likelihood that the temperature (and duration) on the inside of the chicken are insufficient to kill disease causing bacteria. Note: The overall idea is to recognize that surface bacterial contamination can be killed with sufficient temperature over a sufficient duration of time, recognizing that the lowest overall temperature will be in the thickest part of the meat, and ensuring that there isn't a mechanical mechanism that will introduce contamination in that area.

eddanger 5y ago

We often fear salmonella in meat but our blindspot is often salmonella in salad and veggies. Be careful out there! https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/outbreaks-active.html https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/outbreaks-active.html