Federal food-safety officials are considering whether labels on some frozen chicken products adequately inform consumers that the chicken is raw and provide sufficient cooking instructions.
Stuffed chicken entrees -- which look cooked because they're breaded and prebrowned so that the breading sticks -- are blamed for five salmonella outbreaks since 1998 that sickened 71 people, Minnesota health officials say. For every illness detected, more go unreported, officials say.
The latest outbreak, in Minnesota in March, occurred even though the products' labels changed more than a year ago to more explicitly state that the chicken is uncooked. "We've done everything we think is appropriate, but if consumer behavior hasn't changed, we have to deal with that," says David Goldman, assistant administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Some food-safety experts say March's outbreak indicates that the label changes weren't enough and that the products should be precooked or irradiated by the manufacturer so that bacteria is killed.
"They look precooked, plus they are marketed as convenience foods," says Carlota Medus, epidemiologist with the Minnesota Department of Health. Consumers may think the chicken is cooked and only reheat it, which doesn't kill bacteria, she says.
Of the four consumers sickened in the recent outbreak, two thought the product was precooked. Three used a microwave, even though the label warns not to, Medus says. Conventional oven-cooking is advised because they cook more uniformly than microwaves.
The outbreak was linked to chicken cordon bleu and chicken breast stuffed with cheese from Serenade Foods. In 2006, Serenade recalled 75,800 pounds of similar products after a salmonella outbreak. The USDA said consumers may have improperly cooked the products, thinking they were precooked.
No recall was done after the March outbreak. Salmonella is allowed in raw poultry, as it's expected that the bacteria will be killed during cooking. The USDA also says Serenade's labels and cooking instructions were adequate. On the front, in black lettering, the label says "uncooked" poultry.
Serenade and about 25 other companies changed labels after the 2006 recall, as the USDA requested, Goldman says. Old labels had wording such as "ready to cook" or "not precooked."
Serenade and some other companies also dropped microwave instructions. Those may lead consumers to think that products only need reheating, food-safety experts advised the USDA during the 2006 label-change discussions.
Serenade added a line of cooked chicken entrees in 2006 but dropped it because of weak demand, says Janelle Deatsman, Serenade spokeswoman. "We think it's important consumers follow label directions," she says.
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