Okay- now that I’ve talked about how much I love food, let’s talk about disgusting food parasites. There’s a lot of confusing information out there on how much you have to cook pork. A lot of government sites are trying to play it safe and say that you should cook your pork to 170 degrees. A lot of cooking sites and meat sellers are saying you can cook it to 137 degrees, and you’ll be fine. Who is right?
Well, I finally found some hard data on the agriculture canada website.
First of all, it must be noted that cases of trichinosis infestation in
canadian pork is extremely rare. For example, in 1997, none were found.
However, with respect to the original question,
The
Canadian Food Inspection Agency- Meat Hygiene Manual of Procedures,
Section 4.10.2 provides a useful chart. According to this chart, both
the play it safe government sites and the cooks and meat sellers are wrong, although the cooks and meat sellers only marginally. To ensure
destruction of Trichinella, meat must be heated to a temperature of 137
degrees for at least three minutes. So cooking to 135 and letting it reach
a temperature of 137 probably isn’t so good. However, by the time you get
to 145.5 degrees fahrenheit (63 degrees celsius), Trichinella is killed
instantly. So there you have it- cook pork to 146 degrees fahrenheit and you
should be fine.
posted at 22:27 on Sat, 10 Dec, 2005 |
path: /living
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