With multiple food recalls from chicken nuggets and bagged salad to ground beef, you shouldn’t skip grilling safety at your socially-distanced Fourth of July cookout.
Food safety experts, consumer groups and health officials have been stressing food safety precautions for years, particularly when recent recalls have again raised concerns about E. coli contamination.
In mid-June, nearly 43,000 pounds of ground beef, including packages sold at Walmart stores, were recalled because of possible E. coli. Four-pound bags of “Pilgrim’s Fully Cooked Chicken Breast Nuggets” shipped to stores in four states also have been recalled.
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Meat isn’t the only food carrying risk. Fresh Express has recalled dozens of different salad mixes sold at stores in 31 states, including Walmart, Hy-Vee, Aldi and Jewel-Osco that may be linked to a Cyclospora outbreak that has sickened 206.
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But dealing with raw meat can be tricky, and cooking it improperly can be deadly.
“Cooking food thoroughly and handling it correctly is critically important,” Carmen Rottenberg, a former administrator with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, previously told USA TODAY. “The food produced is not sterile. … People want to cook raw food and prepare it at home. If you prepare it at home, you have to know there are some risks associated with it.”
