Burgers? Check. Perfect weather? Check. Awesome new grilling utensils? Double check. Sounds like you’re ready to fire up the grill and enjoy one of our favorite summer activities. So you bring the potato salad, and your friends here at Keep Our Food Safe will bring the safe grilling tips.

Safe barbecues start on…the farm? That’s right. Food animal veterinarians work day in and day out to make sure our nation’s livestock and poultry are healthy, disease free and safe for consumption before they ever make it to the supermarket shelves.

Speaking of the supermarket – your visit there is the next ingredient for a safe, healthy barbecue. The USDA recommends purchasing your meat and poultry right before you check out. This minimizes the time the meat is unrefrigerated. And while you’re at the grocery store, make sure you separate those frozen burgers from other foods in the cart. This protects your groceries from cross contamination.

Make sure you go directly home, so you can refrigerate your food immediately. The USDA suggests you refrigerate within two hours. And on those hot days when the merc ury soars past 90 degrees? You probably should be refrigerating your food within one hour.

Before you start grilling, it’s important to make sure you properly, and thoroughly, thaw your food. Doing so will allow your food to cook more evenly. The best way is to let it thaw is in the refrigerator, or you can soak sealed packages in cold water. But if you’re in a hurry, defrost it in the microwave and make sure you immediately place it on the grill.

It’s important to remember to keep your meat and poultry refrigerated until you are ready to start grilling, and only remove it from the refrigerator if you’re going to grill right away. If you’re keeping you food in a cooler, make sure it’s in the shade and not directly underneath the sun. Similarly, keep your burgers warm until serving them. The USDA recommends at least 140 degrees or warmer.

Thoroughly cooking your food is one of the best ways to kill harmful bacteria. But don’t depend on your eyes. Looks can be deceiving. You can’t really tell if your food is finished cooking just by looking at the color and texture. In fact, according to the USDA, one out of four burgers turns brown before it reaches a safe internal temperature. That’s why they recommend using a food thermometer to make sure your food has reached the proper internal temperature and is safe to eat.

But what about those ready to eat foods, like brats, hotdogs or veggie burgers that are labeled “pre-cooked?” They still need to be treated like any other item you cook on your grill. The USDA recommends using a food thermometer to make sure they’re cooked to at least 165 degrees. This not only destroys the harmful bacteria that may already be in the food, but also any bacteria that may have been transferred from cross-contamination.

And, as always, thoroughly cleaning surfaces, utensils and your hands will kill harmful bacteria and reduce cross contamination. Wash with warm, soapy water for about 20 seconds before and after handling food. But don’t forget to rinse off your fruits and veggies with cold water too.

Just remember, keep cold foods cold and hot foods hot, and thoroughly clean and cook your food. Follow this recipe for a safe and tasty barbecue. Please pass the potato salad.

Keep Our Food Safe would like to return to the topic of NAIS. You haven’t forgotten about NAIS, have you? We’ve talked about NAIS, or the National Animal Identification System before. It’s a program run by the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to track the movement of our livestock throughout the country.

As we mentioned before, the identification system serves an important purpose: slowing the spread of animal disease. By enabling a disease to be traced within a 48-hour period, NAIS will dramatically improve the United States’ response capacity to limit the spread of animal diseases. This will provide a safeguard to maintain food security and protecting our food supply by protecting animal health.

The case for NAIS is growing stronger. Recently, APHIS released the results of a cost-benefit analysis on NAIS. APHIS commissioned the study to provide economic information on NAIS to consumers and to estimate the costs and benefits of adopting the program.

The study indicated three compelling reasons for producers to adopt NAIS.

First, we can save money on disease control by being able to identify our livestock because the process will be less costly. The report indicates identification programs can reduce the time it takes to conduct disease testing, a component of our nation’s ongoing disease control and eradication efforts. Quicker, more efficient disease testing can reduce the time it takes to check animals on farms and ranches – a cost-effective way to keep our food supply safe and secure.

Secondly, animal identification systems are fast becoming prerequisites for international trade, and many countries won’t accept imports from countries without animal identification systems. If they don’t implement NAIS, producers and all those involved in exporting livestock could lose more than $1.3 billion annually due to reduced access to international markets. Because exports increase the prices paid to all producers, access to international markets affects all producers, not just those that export.

And finally, NAIS is more effective at higher participation rates, and is more cost effective at higher participation rates. The more producers who participate in NAIS, the more economically effective the program will be and there will be reduced chances of negative effects from a disease outbreak. The report indicates that little to moderate participation in animal identification systems could be a costly decision for producers to make, potentially making them less competitive in domestic and international markets.

Back in March, many officials testified before Congress on the importance of adopting a mandatory animal identification system. Representatives from the veterinary profession and food safety regulatory bodies expressed that adopting a nationwide program to track our livestock is an effective way to reduce disease outbreaks.

Dr. Ron DeHaven, American Veterinary Medical Association CEO, emphasized that NAIS is an excellent way for authorities to quickly respond to disease that may enter our nation’s food supply. By being able to quickly track sick animals, we can save millions of dollars, as well as protect human and animal lives from foodborne illnesses.

Protecting our food supply AND saving money? Sounds to me like these are good reasons to adopt NAIS.

P.S. - USDA is seeking to engage stakeholders and hear their concerns about NAIS and feasible solutions to those concerns. The information and ideas gathered will assist Secretary Vilsack in making decisions about the future direction of animal traceability in the United States. Learn more about giving feedback, including upcoming "Listening Tour" dates.

You've read about FARAD and its important role in food safety, now you can learn more about it in our latest Chew on This podcast.

Veterinarians rely on a variety of food safety tools, and FARAD helps make sure our meat, eggs and dairy products are free of drug, environmental and pesticide contaminants. In this new podcast, we discuss the crucial role of the Food Anima l Residue Avoidance Databank (FARAD) in the food safety with Dr. Jim Riviere, Professor of the College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina University and Co-Director of the FARAD program.

Listen to the podcast now.

As the debate over how to reform the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and supervision of our nation’s food safety oversight continues, a recent study by George Washington University Medical Center (GWU) reminds everyone that the lion’s share of food safety efforts are run at the local and state levels.

For instance, when food inspectors raid and close a restaurant for poor sanitation or unclean kitchens, those inspectors are generally employed by local governments. And it is the state, not the federal government, responsible for issuing health certificates for factories and food service industries.

The GWU report, Stronger Partnerships for Safer Food, was produced by the Food Safety Research Consortium, which includes the Association of Food and Drug Officials, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and the National Association of County and City Health Officials and was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The primary sources of the report’s criticisms and recommendations were derived from three workshops involving dozens of health experts, consumer groups and executives from across the country, including the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the USDA, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, the National Restaurant Association, H.J. Heinz Company, the International Food Information Council, and the United Food & Commercial Workers.

The report’s basic finding is that—to be effective—any reforms to food safety oversight must involve local and state food safety agencies.

Unfortunately, local and federal food safety oversight personnel, local health departments and the FDA aren’t working together very well right now. Many times, when local agencies discover a food borne illnesses, they may not choose to share the names of the victims with the Centers for Disease Control for fear violating privacy laws. And conversely, when the FDA obtains a food distribution list during a recall or food borne illness outbreak, the FDA doesn’t always share these lists with the local agencies that are charged with checking store shelves to make sure the product is recalled properly.

What’s worse, many states don’t have the funding to employ a local epidemiologist, so the support that local communities get varies nationwide. The new report from George Washington University isn’t just a stone throwing exercise. It offers 27 detailed findings on the strengths and weaknesses of our current system but also offers 19 specific recommendations for improvement.

These recommendations call on Congress to give federal agencies a mandate to begin collaborating with the 3,000 local and state public health agencies involved in food safety nationwide. Furthermore, the report recommends that these local, state and federal food safety agencies would be better served and organized through the establishment of a network of regional, federally-funded food borne outbreak response centers to investigate outbreaks. Each of these centers would be staffed by local, state and federal epidemiologists and environmental health officials.

We at keepyourfoodsafe.org feel that perhaps the most important point in the report is simply this: “State and local agencies collectively conduct many more inspections, test many more food samples for harmful contamination, and bring many more food safety enforcement actions than the federal food safety agencies. Food safety will not be complete—or successful—unless the efforts of these agencies are strengthened and integrated more fully into the national food safety system.”