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Modesto-area holiday grillers get safety tips

Modesto Bee (CA) - 7/4/2015

July 03--Here's to a safe and sane Fourth of July, and we aren't talking fireworks.

Food-borne illness tends to spike during grilling season, when warm weather speeds the growth of pathogens and meat might not be cooked evenly over the flames.

Christine Bruhn, a Davis-based expert with the University of California Cooperative Extension, offers advice in a new series of videos. She has worked on food-safety education with Foster Farms, which had a 2013 salmonella outbreak tied to raw chicken from Livingston and Fresno but has since reduced the incidence to well below the industry standard.

165 degrees: Temperature of safely cooked chicken

160 degrees: Advice for ground beef

145 degrees: Advice for steaks, chops and roasts

Among the tips:

-- Don't wash raw chicken, which had been advised by some experts in the past. This can leave contaminated droplets as far as 2 feet from the sink.

-- Use one cutting board for meat, preferably one that can be sanitized in the dishwasher, and another board for vegetables and other foods.

-- Clean all surfaces where meat is handled with soap and warm water followed by a disinfectant.

-- Wash your hands for 20 seconds after touching raw meat.

-- Keep the refrigerator at 40 degrees or colder, and use a thermometer in there.

-- Keep meat cold up until grilling it -- and ignore any recipe that says to marinate it at room temperature.

-- Use a meat thermometer, after you calibrate it for accuracy, and stick it in the thickest part of the meat.

-- Cook chicken to at least 165 degrees, ground beef to 160, and steaks, chops and roasts to 145.

"The best cooks use thermometers," Bruhn said. "That way, you don't overcook, you don't undercook. Your meat will be juicy and good -- and safe."

Elsewhere on the Farm Beat:

The food-safety cause continues this summer with the Master Food Preserver program in Tuolumne, Calaveras and Amador counties.

Selected volunteers will learn about home canning, freezing and drying from the Cooperative Extension, then pass on their knowledge to other interested people.

The cost is $135 for the class, which will involve nine sessions from Aug. 28 to Oct. 30. Prospective applicants must attend a July 17 meeting in San Andreas or an Aug. 4 meeting in Jackson. For more information, contact Robin Cleveland at 530-621-5528 or rkcleveland@ucdavis.edu.

The fourth annual Farm to Table Dinner on Aug. 5 will benefit the National Ag Science Center, a Modesto-based group whose projects include the Ag in Motion mobile classroom for junior high schools.

Tickets are $70 for the dinner, which will be from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. on a research field at Stanislaus Farm Supply, on Service Road south of Ceres.

Greens Table of Modesto will prepare a meal highlighting food and wine produced in Stanislaus County. The menu is still being refined, but it will include watermelon salad with greens and crumbled cheese; turkey marbella with olives, capers and apricots; rice pilaf with almonds; corn; and a summer cobbler for dessert.

Tickets will be sold until July 23. More information is at www.agsciencecenter.org or 209-521-2902.

Stanislaus Farm Supply happens to be this year's inductee into the Stanislaus County Ag Hall of Fame, as noted in last week's Farm Beat. It will be honored at a Nov. 12 dinner in Turlock, another fund-raiser for the science center. Details are at the same website and phone number.

John Holland: 209-578-2385, jholland@modbee.com

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