12-03-2014 Kashrus Food Safety

hello and welcome to starkays monthly webinar held the last Wednesday of every month but this year this month a little bit of a change in schedule because of the the illegal holiday last week we're here in the Baltimore headquarters of star k epner I'm Rabbi SV Goldberg and our host today is none other than Dr avrum Pollock the president of the Starke welcome thank you thank you for joining us taking your time from your busy schedule um we are going to discuss today food safety which Dr Pollock is an expert in his PhD in microbiology I think something like that salt cell see I'm already I've already a little bit off because I don't have a degree in in the Advent of Cell Biology um and I know food safety has been in interest of Dr Pollock's for quite some time our number here if you want to listen by telephone is 218-895-1203 again 218-895-1203 passcode 2020 our our web address is learnkosher.clickwebinar.com forward slash kosher um so if you could a couple people could let us know that they could hear us that then we're all good to go uh we know if one or two people can hear then we're all uh we're all set um okay so we are good they came here thank you very much for that thank you for joining um let's start with let's start with this Dr Pollock um I made up a little poll over here and uh here we go it says I have gotten sick from eating food that was spoiled or Harbor disease it's a yes or no question so we'll see how how how people respond to that um I had my own uh incident not too long ago I was traveling on a plane to Eric's Israel to Israel and they served I think fish and and I'm pretty sure that was the culprit I got pretty sick the day after that uh in Israel and uh one thing I'll uh you have to learn how to say Pepto-Bismol in Hebrew they don't really know what where they have no idea what that is they do have it that we were able to find it um but it was uh not easy basically what it's going to do is neutralize stomach acid okay and that's uh that's what uh that's what they they did have this become it's the same thing that it comes with a pink uh it's pink colored right okay they do have it there I don't think the color is the active ingredient but uh okay you wouldn't make that much of a difference when you mentioned that you ate spoiled fish I recall an incident uh took place uh well over well maybe about more than 50 years ago uh uh giving away my age I suppose but I was in Camp not going to say the name of the camp uh it was it was the Yeshiva type camp and I had actually left camp that Shabbos for my Brother's Bar Mitzvah my younger brothers and when I came back to camp on matar Chavez uh I was found out that at least a half a dozen cameras were actually taken on Shabbos to the hospital seems that the fish served on Friday night was spoiled and food safety uh is extremely important uh right and fish is certainly a fish is a culprit yeah very often the culprit not everybody realizes it's just how common food-borne illnesses are there are foodborne illnesses can come from many different sources they can come from chemical chemicals that are harmful and are present in the food we eat there can be different types of toxins such as insecticide residue residues all kinds of different things but by far the most common cause of foodborne illnesses are biological and this would include the microorganisms some of the nasty Critters that I'm sure people have heard the names like E coli E coli comes in there are some very pathogenic forms of E coli like the 157 which has been in the newspapers quite a bit this listeria this salmonella and many more which these nasty Critters do uh affect our food and they can make you quite severely ill sometimes it requires hospitalization and sometimes there have been many many instances where the people have actually died as a result of a foodborne illness so let me just say that about we have some results here actually most people responded said they did not get sick so that's interesting um okay uh that's good that's actually good news to the best of my knowledge the uh Center for Disease Control in Atlanta estimates that there are approximately 75 million cases of foodborne illness every year now most of them are just the stomachache or mild diarrhea that one may get and could very well be that many of the people who are answering your poll and say they've never been ill don't attribute it to necessarily to the food that they've eaten they don't even realize but it's probably far more common than most people believe so let's start what the impetus for this webinar doctor product was our recent food safety course that you arranged here in in the office we basically uh put everything as on hold as we could and we spent two days studying food safety in in the course and uh I want to talk about why why you felt that was so important here I'll show you our part that this is our initial certificate just for attending um the uh the hassip hasid for processors training course for two days and hasib stands for Hazard analysis critical control points right okay that's right that was on our test and uh and and um you know that's a uh a food safety initiative and we just before we talk about that let me just show you some of the we had here here's around behind them in um watching one of the this is we were taking we took some tests another behind them in the background and uh and you can see here our lecturer and everybody is there listening to him um so what was the impetus and you know for us getting certified uh we're now going to be going around expecting for food safety and the places that we go for kosher and what's the correlation not necessarily star k has no intention of uh abandoning its primary goal of providing kosher food to kosher consumers I'm glad I'm glad to hear that it's certainly not our goal to become food safety inspectors and however keep in mind that the majority of people who buy kosher food and study after study I've shown this are not necessarily those people who buy kosher food because of the religious significance of them we as from again of course know that the if we our food is not Kosher we're certainly you're just not gonna eat unless it's a um right however most people who buy kosher food believe whether correctly or not that kosher food somehow has enhanced value it's quote unquote more pure more safe and so on we all know that kosher food can very well be no different than food which is not certified kosher just evidenced by all the junk food that are certified all the beverages that are probably downright harmful to you all the uh sugary snack foods all the potato chips the greasy potato chips and high-end carbohydrates and very lower nutrients so kosher doesn't it doesn't necessarily we all know that anybody who eats kosher food on a regular basis knows that kosher food does not necessarily mean healthy and that's not necessarily the reason why we're eating it we eat it because we want to remain healthy in a spiritual sense however most people in the supermarkets who buy kosher food and when they see two items on the Shelf one next to the other one bearing a kosher symbol and whatnot and they select the one with the kosher symbol it's because they believe that kosher somehow does impart a greater awareness of what goes on in the manufacturing procedures and therefore they select the kosher food when we certify a company uh with their products are Kosher we of course we look at all the ingredients we look at the all the equipment that is being used on which the food is manufactured uh we have an OP a unique opportunity to go into this company with a fresh set of eyes and it is to our advantage if we can advise the companies that we are working with on certain safety measures which we become aware if our rabbis are trained to be able to spot potentially hazardous conditions and we can point this out to a company we have performed a vital service not only to the uh General consumer who buys kosher food but certainly to our own people who are buying kosher food because of their spiritual significance to kosher food and most people kind of have the idea well you know it's nice to be aware and everybody wants safe food but but somehow they look at it as well it's more like organic food organic food it's free of pesticides and free of and uh all kinds of chemicals that are present in the food probably something that has anything to do with food safety or people want to buy Natural Foods you're saying what I'm saying is that when we're talking about health and safe conditions we're talking about safeguarding your life and I would like if you don't mind I'd like to read to you uh actually a surf in which is talking about hillcasmaka the uh mandate that we have that we have a roof we have to have a fence around the pizza around the roof to protect ourselves and if anybody's interested in looking this up it's a kosher mishpat Zion and I'm going to read to you it says any Danger that there may be a threat to one's life it is a positive Commander them it's a say to remove it and to guard yourself from it it was these are to be exceedingly careful but Dover are you off in a good way like it says by the midsource market you have to guard yourself and watch out for your health and safety be in most of us here but if that a person does not do that and he leaves in place some type of a pitfall which may create an endangerment to one's life he has consciously um nullified a positive commandment the over below and he has don't be guilty of uh being the cause of some spilling blood so we see that this is quite open and we have to be very careful about this so we as kosher inspectors who go in and are certifying plans if we were to certify something and knowingly be aware that a food company uh is using dangerous manufacturing methods or even much more common is if we're certifying a food service establishment a restaurant or a caterer and we see what goes on in the kitchen that they're not really doing things properly they're not following the uh the municipal laws that are intended to guard once uh the health uh and the hygieneogenic laws which may be in place we all know that many municipalities and cities they have the laws on the books but they're not really enforced and how much are regularly there certainly in a food service place we have a much gift to maybe but the rabbinic coordinator who's coming in and uh at least on a fairly often and he talks to the Majid to make sure that everything is running well he will spot if he's trained and he can spot conditions which lead us to believe that Starke and I'm sure this is true for other conscious organizations may be guilty of having a situation of certifying food and encouraging people to eat in a certain establishment which is not being careful and there is a real Hazard to this food and we continue certifying this I think that we have certainly transgressed this mandate that the chocolate is talking about so then the question is here that uh Joe is asking so what does a machine do um especially if the company disagrees or ignores the warning does he go to the health department or does that is that what we're going to do you know take them to uh okay the answer to your question is a very the question is a very good one and I have to at the outset say that in who are in the catering establishment they're in the restaurant or even in many other companies they are not necessarily trained to know all the laws and and to spot it however certain very Basics if you see rodent droppings around if you see that the dishes are not being washed uh in sufficiently hot water the magic is encouraged not to go to the health department not to certainly not to be a Moser but to go to his supervisor who will then bring it back to the attention of the administration here at this RK we will turn be in touch with that company and say listen we are not comfortable certifying your establishment if these conditions are going to continue we cannot be party to you're endangering the kosher consumer and we're not going to report them to any City however we will threaten them and have done so on occasion if the conditions do not dramatically improve we will drop that certification because we can't be a party to such shoddy practices so Abe is asking abh is asking why is there many times we see the kosher certified establishment displays a very low grade on their health department inspection I think that's in New York in New York City where they have it in the in the window does a certifying agency feel no obligation to protect their consumers from the health effects of unsanitary food this is what you're talking I certainly can't speak for other uh certifying agencies or individual or abundant who provide but I believe uh that most of the larger cautious organizations uh share my sentiment that it is an obligation for cautious organizations to be aware and not to allow these types of situations to continue now that doesn't mean that everything that a company is doing we need to be on top of if a company says product is new or Pure or contains does not contain any type of ingredient if it's a outright lie we don't want to be associated with such a company because I think about that they're going to be lying about the things that matter the cautious as well and but there are many all kinds of things that uh companies advertise on their labels and we don't necessarily I don't think believe that the kosher consumer necessarily expects us to be responsible certainly if it's something that matters as far as Costa risk is concerned if they say what the bracha is if they write it say berkas mizonas instead of a hamotzi and we don't agree with that because we certainly would not allow that label to be circulated we would force a recall which we've done a number of times uh if the states passes through all if they say it's yashan and if this cannot be verified but independently by our own we certainly would not allow such a thing to continue but if they say it's brand new when we know it's an identical product to what has been I don't believe that the concussion that the consumer expects us to be monitoring that however if it's something if they say that it's gluten free and it's not gluten free if they say it's organic and it's not organic and they're lying about that we certainly would not tolerate that and we would not want to be associated with so we know manufacturer we know about the loss of practices Adam is asking if there's an outbreak of food poisoning is there a danger that the who's the kosher overseer could be seen as culpable for any lapse in health and hygiene levels could we be responsible somehow this the agency or the mashiach for not doing something about it absolutely uh if we uh you know I've never heard of a magaz called typhoid Moshe but uh certainly if there's somebody that can only have guilty of transmitting some kind of communicable disease uh is that certainly not something that it would certainly disqualify him from being a Maj you're saying if he had if he actually handling the food I don't know if he means that I think he means let's say something's going on in the in in the facility that he didn't uh pay attention to would he be responsible not necessarily that's the question that has a lot of gray area to it uh I don't know to what extent he is uh required to investigate and to ascertain that it is a safe but anytime we encourage them that anytime there is a question regarding the safety of the food he needs to report it to his supervisor and in return uh back here in the office we will look at it we will consult with experts on saying food safety and if we feel that we're somehow involved in the certification of some unsafe condition through the food which might harm the consumer we certainly would take action now I do want to mention also we talked about not all the a biological type of Hazards in food are bacterial there are other types there's parasites there are viral diseases that can be communicated has a cold and uh during the winter time he they have herpes virus or something like that it's not life-threatening but it can possibly be life-threatening to somebody who is immunocompromised somebody who might be a cancer patient that's receiving immunotherapy or or chemotherapy and their immune system is compromised that can be life-threatening but for the most cases even if it's just going to cause the food we don't want a Masjid with a food we've had to he needs to exercise good sense and hopefully the establishment would not allow a magaz as well just like they wouldn't have latched they should not allow any work done who has a cold I'm sure everybody has gone into a restaurant to use the restroom and they see a sign up there which says employees are required to wash their hands I have often wondered who's enforcing it you know is there a video camera that actually monitors whether all their employees are washing their hands properly but I think it's very easy yeah it's not so difficult for a supervisor and a restaurant to make sure that employees are employing good hygienic standards and uh it's certainly a majig who was involved in handling food needs to be just as careful if not more than any other worker in a food service establishment and Danielle says I did not believe that the two days courts makes the rabbi certified in food safety but only provide additional insight to complement the actual kosher verification that's it that's certain you know that's probably uh true we're not okay we're not going to be certifying companies as food safe passive certified and so on but we are more knowledgeable yeah well when you this two-day course which was a an intensive course actually for those people who've taken the exam and I believe all our red one and uh took the exam and I'm confident that they've passed it because uh Rabbi is like somebody asked me well I don't know if I can pass the test I tell them if you can learn a Raj but you can certainly pass this test and and um uh technically you are certified uh as a hassa certified that doesn't mean that you're an expert by you're far from being an expert however the main idea of the course is that when somebody goes into an establishment uh by the name itself Hazard analysis of critical control points you know you have been trained to know where are the areas which are most likely to cause problems for example just the very simple example the first thing that Juan looks at is the ingredients that come into a food manufacturer he has a loading dock or just a back door where the delivery of the raw ingredients that go come to the company well first thing one once and I was where are these ingredients coming from are they safe that is a critical control Point very often if the food is heated and then left to lie around uh that's a critical control point we learned a lot of a lot of those details like the 40 to 140 they kept talking about exactly 40 degrees that's the Danger Zone Danger Zone which has kept at between 40 degrees Fahrenheit and 140 degrees uh that's most likely where that is most likely the temperature range where bacteria harmful or pathogenic bacteria can multiply and cause disease and therefore proper Refrigeration of food proper heating of food proper cooking of the food uh how many times have we gone to a Kiddush on a Shabbos at the show and there are salads lying around there's fish you know uh all kinds of things that can jump liver chop chopped liver is a good example and who knows how long has it been sitting there in a hot day on in in the sun uh you know or at the air conditioning is that adequate that maybe you've been sitting there for hours they actually said that two hours after two hours yeah you should throw it out so who's monitoring this and this is something that every one of us uh not only not only every individual should be aware of these types of things and that's why Starke Texas so seriously uh the last thing about silver wants is that he made a kiss and somebody got sick from eating the food which he was prepared certainly was not intent his intention but we what we want to really do is create awareness awareness in turn will make people more able to safeguard in their own homes and their own tools and their own schools that food is being properly handled I know that we've had an article a couple of years ago in Castro's currents which I believe you're going to post later that anybody wants to read it and we have a whole bunch of tips maybe we can discuss some of them how people can actually uh in their own homes uh cut down on the prevalence of foodborne illnesses right I would mention that Dr Paul himself took the course and the test and uh your own initiative nobody's forcing you to do that you know but I'm asking uh the other people to do it uh and if you're not willing to set an example uh I don't think that would create the impression that I take it seriously I really do take food safety seriously and we all should do you eat when you go to a kidish do you eat the chopped liver or the the mayonnaise laid in the you know whatever is there you are personally yeah personally I couldn't say you don't have to you don't have to answer people no I I personally do not because chopped liver is uh even if it's perfectly safe and fresh and you know everything has been taken care of there are many other reasons why one may not want to eat chopped the liver uh you know the liver is the chemical masterchemical gland of the body there are well over 500 known chemical reactions that take place in the in the liver of a uh of an animal as as in our own bodies and all the uh there are many toxins and all kinds of things that are present in the liver so I'm not suggested I'm certainly not suggesting don't take it that I'm recommending people refrain from chopped liver certainly if somebody has high cholesterol uh it's very known it's known that the chopped liver is high in cholesterol but you know take a Lipitor afterwards if you like you know to counteract the uh anything in moderation liver but I personally do not I do try to stay away from salads that have mayonnaise in them that simply not be it's not worth it is tempting as the food on the uh at the Kiddush maybe or at a smorgasborder it's not worth getting sick especially we in Baltimore have to very often drive to some places in Lakewood or New York many of the symptoms we travel to and I've heard the stories where people uh on their way home uh were feeling very uncomfortable and they don't know if it's because of something that they ate and there it even though your pulse suggests that people have never been sick from food I really believe that it's not aware that they're uncomfortable feelings uh may have come from eating food doesn't mean that you it's come on so far to have to be hospitalized those are relatively rare of the 75 million cases of uh foodborne illnesses annually uh only a couple hundred thousand cases of uh where people have to be hospitalized um so and the vast majority of even people who do go to the hospital uh uh you know come out after a few days and uh doing fine Arlene is asking how do you handle uh Yad salah's bow on Chavez um and with food safety what temperature do you consider yeah so we consider that um I'm not sure exactly what exactly well I'm not sure what the question is either but you know um afternoon uh I would not recommend that you've kept the challenge at 120 degrees or below uh you know from the night from before Shabbos uh that certainly would be a yeah that would be a dangerous practice on the stove is probably uh much higher than 140 degrees so my guess is it's probably in the range of about 160 degrees or so right which is beyond the uh which is a safe Zone someone told me that he kept his children uh on on the keep warm set on like a warm setting and they got sick because it was yes not it's not it wasn't a low heat it was like just like keep one which is I guess a danger yeah and that there's another thing that uh everybody needs to be aware of not all foods are prone to bacterial contamination or spoilage uh one of the things that was stressed uh in the course that uh was given here at Starkey the hasse of course is that foods which are uh high in moisture are the ones while it's prone to cause food illness if you have a piece of uh alcohol that's been lying around from uh before Shabbos that's not a danger because the moisture content is well below uh which have very high in moisture that can uh really uh allow bacteria uh rather disease organisms to thrive that's why they said honey is a good antibacterial because it has a very because right how do you say concentrated sugar which is uh an act it actually it pulls water out those uh remember their chemistry uh the asthmatic potential of Honey is high and it will actually pull water out of foods uh the same was true of sugar and um and salt and that's why they've historically been used as preservatives Joe Joe said with all the issues recently reported regarding food in this is important from China uh and the Starke certifying companies in China the Starke more careful regarding Chinese companies remember the time when they had the the uh what was it in the milk they had the yes the Plastics or something or melamine uh yes that was a chemical that was added uh to the dried milk powder uh it's not that that is the kind of ingredient that sartay would never consider certifying in China uh the kinds of ingredients that we do certify in China are not the ingredients that um are likely to have problems but I have to add something else companies who buy food ingredients from China such as ascorbic acid or amino acids different kinds of preservatives all the various chemical additives which are used in food the companies that are buying that they have their own quality control tests and they are very careful have told us that they've gone to plants in China they have to put on a mess they have a clean air environment and they're very careful because they simply would not be able to sell their product the problem with the book powder that was laced with melamine which is a poison in China it was sold domestically most of it it was very literally in China mostly that melamine was not really uh sent outside of to the companies there may have been small small samples of it or small amounts of it that some companies did buy that but for the most most part a company buying a food ingredient not only from China no matter where if it's a large company that uses ingredients first thing they do is quarantine any product they're going to take a sample and they're going to bring it to their own if they don't have their own lab they will test it for microbiology they will test it for contaminants uh chemical contaminants or toxins they will test it for Purity they will test it first of all how do they know that the product that they're buying is really what it says on the box right we're on the label and they do their own testing and uh so this is the food safety testing of the food ingredients is just one of the things that many companies do so it's not likely that your local restaurant is buying an ingredient directly directly from China is that going to buy it from a larger company and uh vast majority of cases it will have been tested okay um Jeff says rice can also be a major issue if not kept at the proper temperature um that makes you think also about the sushi issue with uh you know what temperature it has to be at and right and and how to keep it fresh and and you know there are issues and certainly is associated not only is the rice the possible uh an ingredient prone to invest to to contamination but also the raw fish Fisher and in the article uh which you will be posted um it's a actually a story that I remember from many years ago reading about this one time and uh it actually made an impact on me because I already I always remembered it the story goes back to the early 1900s when area hospitals found out that there was a certain parasite tapeworm um that was growing and many people living in the New York area and it was almost found exclusively in Jewish women and this is a very nasty tapeworm it doesn't kill people but it makes them pretty sick these tapeworms can grow to fairly large sizes you know like 20 30 feet per month and it lasts for many years and what a tapeworm a successful it's a parasite it's successful parasite doesn't want to kill its host what it wants to do is drain nutrients from them so that it itself will survive and proliferate but if it's too successful it kills its house itself will die because the parasite cannot live independently so where was it coming from so they found out that this parasite was traced to the fact that women making gefilte fish it was a common practice in order to make sure that the right amount of salt and pepper were added to uh the raw fish they were constantly replacing the raw fish and these parasites where you have eggs and they would be ingesting raw fish and uh that's how old this parasite was found in freshwater fish you know like uh White Fish and uh and uh Pike and Whitefish which were the main ingredients for gefilte fish and uh there was a lot of Education uh that needed to be done to stop this stuff the cooking process what about salad packages we have a few questions with the star k are they tested the salads with The Stockade the Dole yes fresh expression yes we don't test them we do not test it uh uh certainly the companies that do this uh are very well aware of the danger of fresh salads um actually washed salads can sometimes be safer than a non-washed salad the best thing of course is uh if you wash it yourself at home uh people uh recoil at the idea that you can take some lettuce and put it in soap in the soapy water I have news for you if you rinse off the regular dish detergent sufficiently well soak your lettuce and it's by the way it's very good for getting the bugs off as well you still require but you have to check it for vedicas taloyan but you will find that if you soak leaves of lettuce even romaine lettuce the green leafy leaves it's going to uh you leave it soaking in a soapy dish solution it's going to get rid of the bugs you wash them off so rinse it very well not only will it be kill the bacteria and the wash should make it much cleaner for that very reason because the bacterial load has been so greatly reduced it will stay fresher in your refrigerator for much much longer period of time than you used to you're talking about Romaine that doesn't have any certification like yeah we're not talking the certification is not on the fact that uh you've reduced bacteria bacteria are not nearly aniam and they're not visible to the human eye and therefore uh they're not they don't can't represent a uh halachic uh question uh but the companies themselves not only do they wash it in a chlorine solution the vegetables that are bad but they also do field inspections um because sometimes uh Farmers the individual Farmers where they get their produce from uh employ unsafe practices and the companies uh a company that has a has the issue a recall because of bacterial contamination with listeria or salmonella or can't really brought back their any of the common contaminants which can cause dise uh they take a tremendous economic hit so they're very aware of this and uh not for kosher reasons that they're doing this they are certainly big companies like Fresh Express the Dole and many of the others all are very concerned about food safety as well um so one of the listeners is asking just to confirm that this means that all products with the stock here are now food safety certified as well I mean that's not the impression I think I'm trying to give oh no I'm not that's not correct and I think Daniel has a has a good answer that the rebel is not a food safety expert it's just another set of eyes and now we're much more aware of what goes into it what needs to be done to be uh to that is safe we certainly cannot take responsibility if we were to be issuing a food safety certification that would mean that we take responsibility uh we're not doing that we have no intention of doing that what we're trying to do is for our own kosher consumers that the foods we do certify are to make our rabonim much more aware of the issues involved so that we can be trained to spot right potential hazardous another set of eyes but it's not actually we're not certified yes we're not trained sufficiently to actually do the food safety certification program that's coming to the end of our webinar let's go through some of the um uh practical issues that might be necessary to keep your food safe um one thing I'll just uh one thing I learned from the uh the teacher the the course of course that uh on Hassan um was that he said that sometimes glove use if you don't do it right could make things worse you think that you putting on gloves makes the food safer but that's only if you change the gloves when necessary you think okay now I have gloves on now and now everything is fine that's not true you have to change them you have to make sure they don't rip or whatever you know there's yes that's absolutely true yeah gloves are very good because it's reducing contact with human skin but that glove can uh be a potential source of contamination just as easily as skin and if you're changing the gloves often that's great but if you uh uh put that your gloved hand in an area where uh there was kind of potential for bacteria to stick to it then certainly it's no different than your hand or your finger the same way um I recall a very interesting incident uh this had to do with a matzo Bakery and uh they were showing us when we went in to do a um a review of the conscious Bakery um they were very proud of the fact how often the gloves are being changed and they're washed and so that any dough which sticks onto the glove would not go into the next batch and cannot be a potential source of femots of causing cupboards uh we realized that I believe it was Rabbi heinemann who noticed this uh it's very true that they were changing gloves very often but the sleeves that the workers were wearing were very long and the sleeves were just loaded with uh some bits of the dough from the you know and accumulating the past batches and so the gloves uh changing the gloves was very nice but what about the sleeves which were weren't being changed at all and all day long this was coming into contact with the uh with the dough so one needs a certain amount of Common Sense uh sure gloves are important and when used properly so you have any other tips for us to end off the well I think uh in just the kind of things that one himself should be aware of in your show uh everybody uh should be a guardian in your own shoe what you if get yourself onto a Kiddush committee and make sure that uh this proper Refrigeration of any of foods that need it while SIM card doesn't come uh you know if it's a babita the mother of the bar mitzvah boy uh may be bringing the food or before uh Dominic's thoughts so she puts out all the food she came an hour early and the food's not going to be served to two and a half three hours later uh that should certainly not be allowed to happen uh yeah people don't even realize all the things the challenge should be allowed to cool off and be lying around and uh kuggles and these are hot foods that need to stay hot not just warm because they can breed the food borne organisms uh all kinds of practices these are things that everybody needs to know kosher or not Kosher don't use the same equipment to cut raw meat as you do the cook product uh perhaps it's more important in um or I shouldn't say more important but in a kosher household we're so used to the idea of separating Muslims inflation because you know and even if you have meat you know raw meat cashew meat in a butcher shop the most hubs certainly will never have not cautioned meat uh in their home but you don't want to allow it to uh come into contact the raw uncooked meat if you're grilling uh making a barbecue in your house don't put the steaks with the barbecue sauce on a plate put them on the grill and then as the steak is cooked and put it on that same plate without washing it uh really well with soap and water the grill itself the surface of the grill can be a uh it accumulates make sure that it's properly cleaned in some respects the kinds of things that we do in kosher plants there's a lot of controversy is this is the kosher variety safer than the non-kosher or not a good example would be in a chicken plant a kosher chicken plant uh the besides scripture and the Sorting of the uh to remove any Dam from the chicken uh there's a very basic difference in the way a kosher chicken is processed from a non-caution chicken what happens in a non-koshed chicken plant after the chicken is killed it goes into a very hot water bath and that hot water bath allows the feathers to come off very easily you cannot put a kosher chicken in a hot water bath because uh well you can't do it before the um for Malika or the Malaysian process will not work well take out the blood so what they do is they put into a very cold water bath and the question is does this there's been a lot of debates in a kosher chicken plant does this process of not using the hot water does it increase the amount of bacteria bacteria like listeria or salmonella which are common uh in in poultry and or does it reduce it uh on one this fact that you salted remember salt is a very good preservative that certainly cuts down on bacterial contamination and they've actually been studies in scientific journals which show that the kosher chicken has less salmonella on the other hand uh your other disease organisms like listeria which are tend to be found on the feathers of the chicken and they're going through this pucking machine plucking machine uh it takes a while till the chicken's feathers come off and it beats it up and maybe some of these bacteria are around the skin and so on and then it goes into a cold water bath which doesn't really kill the um so the cold water may not be as effectively effective however others say that the salt process itself somehow interferes with the bond that the uh that allows the bacteria to latch onto the skin of the chicken and so there have been many different conflicting studies and the bottom line is don't eat raw chicken don't eat raw meat if you're cooking I'm not sure if you're cooking properly at the recommended temperatures and you know you can have a steak that's on your grill if it's burned on the outside because you cook there too high a temperature but it's still raw in the middle it's gonna be dangerous oh that can be a potential hazard um Abe says I think this is eight from the CRC um Rabbi sharp I was once in a much here from the commercial kitchen where the workers thought that the gloves were used to protect their hands from the food so that their hands don't get contaminated from the food but that obviously and if they're keeping that food on those same gloves on for a prolonged period of time certainly that's going to be a dangerous situation or a question about that right so I'm not sure if we got to everybody's uh everybody's questions um let's see um would there be any benefit for starcase supervisors to be in position to actually do the food safety inspection similar to gluten-free inspections but I think we answered that already that we're not looking to well actually certified okay uh there has been talk we've been had requests uh we have Starkey training I think right currently we have about seven or eight of our uh or people go to plants that are uh qualified to do organic inspections and it's certainly an advantage uh for everybody involved the culture certifying Agency for the organic agency and for the company you have the same person going in that can do a an organic audit as when it does his uh inspection for kosher uh it's the same car rental it's the same hotel bill it's the same airplane uh fair and so on so everybody benefits by the reduced costs and we have a very active program together with the largest organic certified agency called qai uh you may see this symbol on many foods and where the actual organic inspections have been done by Starkey we do to some extent we do gluten-free inspections uh there have been a lot of requests from NS SF which is a very large Organization for us to get involved in food safety I'm not sure that we have the resources to because that would require an intensive training for some of ramage and are we able to do that and besides there's uh quite frankly this potential liability involved can protect the arthritis you know we have big shoulders we're already taking our price for the cashiers can we also take a rise for the food safety uh that's something that our we're actively discussing okay Dr Bobby want to thank you very much for uh for joining us and we thank all the uh the uh the listeners you can certainly see that Dr Pollock's this is one of his uh pet topics and interests for many years um I want to thank Ruben Chapman for helping us on the tech side and thank you for helping us video this um Robert Chapman can you put up the link uh that for the article that Bob mentioned I put it up earlier oh you did put it up already yes okay it was up earlier halfway through oh okay put it up one more one more time if you could we have an article on our cautious currents discussing uh some of the things that we we covered here um if you have any questions about this or other topics feel free to call us at 410-484-4110 or email email us at info at star-k.org uh you you can get the uh The Archives of this and all our other webinars at kosherclasses.org or on our Vimeo Channel star kosher or YouTube we have it there you can you can uh we're available for you and we hope to see you the end of this month uh the last Wednesday of the the uh the month at 12 noon Eastern uh back here at star k elocation webinars thanks again for joining us and thanks again Dr Pollock you're very welcome and thank you and have a great day everyone take care