Make Food safety a priority this Thanksgiving

With thanksgiving less than 24 hours away, health officials say now is the time to focus on making sure your meal and your table is free of germs and bacteria.  Susan Shelton with the Washington Department of Health told the Washington Ag Network the lessons you learned from the previous generation may not always bet the best.

“Getting ourselves away from the practices we learned, from potentially our parents.  Some of the things that they did when we were growing up may not be actually correct for food safety standards.”

Shelton said it’s important you don’t cross contaminate your foods, as well as your preparation surfaces.  She said you can help stave off problems with bleach waters as well as preparing foods at different times of day.

Shelton said it’s also important to properly thaw your bird or any other foods you plan to bake Thursday.  In fact if you’re baking the turkey, it should be thawing at this point.  She says health concerns aren’t limited to food preparation.

When your meal is done it’s important to properly store left overs in a timely fashion.  Shelton understands that thanksgiving dinner is a social event for most, but still try to push to have those leftovers in the fridge in one hour.

“We want you to get the turkey from the time that you pull it out of the oven or whatever you’ve cooked in the oven to have in in the refrigerator cut up, just totally off the bone in the refrigerator ready to cool down within 1-2 hours, once you pull it out of the oven.  I’m going to push towards one hour.”

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