pgluth1 wrote:

>>Anything over 145° will have killed most any parasites and bacteria.
>>Game and all ground meats should be cooked to at least that.
>
> I agree with all the information about cooking times and the hazards of
> undercooked meat, however, I still indulge in various forms of ceviche.

The low pH of lime juice or vinegar is bactericidal. It's why pickled
things work safely and vinegar is used as a sanitizer.

> I
> would argue that safe food handling procedures and proper and prompt
> storage of meat is more important than temp.

Well, no. "...safe food handling procedures and proper and prompt
storage of meat" don't kill trichinae in game meats. They don't kill
salmonella. E. coli just love that kind of thinking. As do all the other
undesirable critters that populate meats.

The meat comes with pathogens and spoilage bacteria already built onto
the surfaces. Handling and storage keeps their numbers from increasing
at geometric rates. "...safe food handling procedures" must include
slaughter, cleaning the carcass, breaking the carcass down, butchering,
cutting and packaging for retail sale, transporting through all those
steps and then to the home for storage and handling thereafter. You
can't count on everyone in the chain doing what's best for you. The odds
aren't good.

"Proper storage of meat" is based on appropriate temperatures to
minimize growth of both pathogens and spoilage bacteria. It doesn't stop
it and it doesn't eliminate it.

> In other words, I still get the shivers when I think of my grandmother
> defrosting meat on the counter all day, but only occasionally worry about
> my very rare hamburgers.

Apologies here. But your criteria are based on flawed information. Here
are two papers from a food science organization whose work has proven to
be solid.

1) THAWING AT AMBIENT TEMPERATURE ON THE COUNTER
"In summary, the research study by Jiménez et al. (1999) supports the
previous study by Klose et al. (1968). The USDA is correct to allow raw
meat, fish, and poultry to thaw at room temperature. There is no risk
in thawing these products at room temperature."
<http://www.hi-tm.com/Documents/Thaw-counter.html>

2) WHICH HAMBURGER IS SAFE?
"The USDA still has a long way to go, because we do not need to cook to
160F. The reference it uses for 100,000-to-1 Salmonella kill also
points out that 15 seconds at 155F or 52 seconds at 150F or 2.7 minutes
at 145F will all give the same kill [Goodfellow, S.J. and Brown, W.L.
1978. Fate of Salmonella inoculated into beef for cooking. J. Food
Protect. 41(8):598-605]. Of course, the hamburger is even more red at
these lower temperatures."
<http://www.hi-tm.com/Documents2000/Pinkburger.html>

But it's not rare. The lowest temp above is medium and it needs to stay
at that temp for nearly 3 minutes for a 100K-1 kill.

Store-bought ground beef isn't safe to eat raw or rare because it
becomes virtually all surface. Bacterial contamination is almost always
a surface phenomenon, and the more surface there is, the greater is the
likelihood of bacterial presence, and the greater is the likelihood of
large numbers.

Pastorio