The average American eats more chicken a year (70 pounds) than beef (68)
or pork (50), and the average American worries about it. The problem is salmonella, a sick-making, sometimes life-threatening bacterium that survives on raw chicken and grows merrily if it recontaminates the cooked chicken or any other likely food in the kitchen.
On average, about half the chickens sold in the United States are contaminated with salmonella. Cooking kills it, and simple sanitation in the kitchen-washing cutting boards, counters and utensils with ordinary detergent- cleans it up before it can spread.
Still, chicken processors know they have a problem, and the solution apparently is on the way. At a recent meeting of the American Veterinary Medical Association in Boston, researchers reported that a simple washing process on the chicken-cutting line will reduce salmonella contamination to near zero. Dr. Robert Brewer, deputy director of slaughter inspection in the U.S. Department of Agriculture`s Food Safety Inspection Service, cited a year- old study from a high-tech chicken processing plant in Puerto Rico that had reduced salmonella to untraceably low levels, if not zero, by the use of a wash water containing the common cleaning compound trisodium phosphate.
The Stauffer Chemical Co., the major producer of industrial phosphates in North America, has patents granted and pending on the process. TSP is familiar to housecleaners as a compound for streakless window and woodwork washing, and it is also a component, by up to 3 percent by weight, of processed cheese. TSP is used in cheese to control the melting point, which is how the chain burger factories get it to stick to the patties. This previous use as a food additive should speed the approval of TSP chicken washes by the Food and Drug Administration, and industry observers expect it to be in place in major processing plants by the end of the year.
The same effect, simply killing the salmonella bacteria, could be achieved by any number of processes. The trick was to find one that didn`t change the flavor, texture or appearance of the chicken. Processors tried chlorinated water and got healthy chicken parts that smelled like gym socks. Stauffer, looking for a product that would solve the salmonella problem, first tried phosphoric acid, another common food additive used in soft drinks, and got clean chickens that had an acidic off-flavor.
Bob Swartz, director of food technology at Stauffer, recalls that after the disappointment with phosphoric acid (the chicken had that funny sour taste one associates with processed meats like summer sausage), they tried lye washes, and, not surprisingly, the lye did what it always does when it comes in contact with fat: It made soap. ”Saponification,” as Swartz put it, is the fancy word for making slippery chickens.
”But the TSP was effective,” he said, and added that it didn`t affect the taste or feel or general attractiveness of the meat. ”We`re not claiming 100 percent, but it certainly reduces salmonella contamination well below 5 percent. We`ve had results on the order of one contaminated chicken out of 600 in a test of the process.”
The Stauffer system combines a power spray to clean the cavity and a dip as the whole chickens come down the line. Besides salmonella, the TSP wash reduces many, but not all, other bacteria. ”Something on the order of 99.9 percent,” Swartz said.
In the meantime, and in the foreseeable future, since not even TSP washes will reduce the chance of salmonella contamination to zero, you just do what mom used to do: Wash your hands, cutting boards, counter surfaces and utensils immediately after handling raw chicken, and let the cooking kill the bacteria.
