in this range for more than two hours Buffet dishes should be kept hot, and leftovers promptly refrigerated and reheated at least to 160ºF/70ºC Trichinosis Trichinosis is a disease caused by infection with the cysts of a small parasitic worm, Trichina spiralis In the United States, trichinosis was long associated with undercooked pork from pigs fed garbage that sometimes included infected rodents or other animals Uncooked garbage was banned as pork feed in 1980, and since then the incidence of trichinosis in the United States has declined to fewer than ten cases annually Most of these are not from pork, but from such game meats as bear, boar, and walrus For many years it was recommended that pork be cooked past well done to ensure the elimination of trichinae It’s now known that a temperature of 137ºF/58ºC, a medium doneness, is sufficient to kill the parasite in meat; aiming for 150ºF/65ºC gives reasonable safety margin Trichinae can also be eliminated by frozen storage for a period of at least 20 days at or lower than 5ºF/–15ºC “Mad Cow Disease” “Mad cow disease” is the common name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, a disease that slowly destroys the brains of cattle It’s an especially worrisome disease because the agent of infection is a nonliving protein particle that cannot be destroyed by cooking, and that appears to cause a similar and fatal disease in people who eat infected beef We still have a lot to learn about it BSE originated in the early 1980s when cattle were fed by-products from sheep suffering from a brain disease called scrapie, whose cause appears to be a chemically stable protein aggregate called a prion The sheep prions somehow adapted to their new host and ... “Mad cow disease” is the common name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, a disease that slowly destroys the brains of cattle It’s an especially worrisome disease because the agent of infection is a nonliving protein particle that cannot be destroyed by... whose cause appears to be a chemically stable protein aggregate called a prion The sheep prions somehow adapted to their new host and ...meat; aiming for 150ºF/65ºC gives reasonable safety margin Trichinae can also be eliminated by frozen storage for a period of at least 20 days at or lower than 5ºF/–15ºC “Mad Cow Disease” “Mad cow disease” is the common name for