Читать книгу Charcuterie For Dummies - Mark LaFay - Страница 27

IN THIS CHAPTER

Learning basic sanitation

Understanding pathogens of concern

Navigating safe handling of animal proteins

Relying on science

There is nothing worse than sitting down to dinner where someone at the table starts a conversation about something, dare I say, gross. You know what kind of topics I’m talking about: things that would be considered uncouth. For the sake of manners, make sure you aren’t sitting at the dinner table when you dig into the next few pages. When it comes to food handling, safety must be of paramount importance to you. In fact, you can’t be a good food artisan if you can’t manage basic hygiene and sanitation. It is so easy to make yourself sick if you don’t take every possible precaution when handling food.

I’ll take it a step further, though. When it comes to working with potentially hazardous food, like meat, there are additional safeguards that must be in place to ensure your safety as well as the safety of anyone who may ingest your creations. Think I’m joking? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2016 there were an estimated 36 million cases of foodborne illness in America. That means that approximately one in every ten people got sick once that year from food. About 30 million of those cases could have been avoided simply through adherence to a proper personal hygiene program in and outside of the kitchen (https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/pdfs/scallan-estimated-illnesses-foodborne-pathogens.pdf).

I won’t bore you with the details here (that’s for later); in this chapter you will learn basic sanitation, hygiene, and safe food handling skills. You will also learn about pathogens of concern and how to safeguard against them with strategies backed by science.