Good news after young man’s fingers trapped in meat mincer

Posted on December 22, 2018 by Douglas Powell

My grandfather lost a couple of his fingers — not lost at the mall but ffixing combines back in the day.

My father and others would send me inside when I was 12-years-old to hold bolts while they were tightened.

I thought about gramps lost fingers.

Sally White of The Canberra Times writes the owners of M & K Meats in Lanyon Marketplace have confirmed the young man whose hand was caught in a meat grinder in an accident on Thursday has retained all his fingers.

“Still the owner of all ten fingers, he will be OK,” a Facebook post said with a smiley face emoji.

“Our young fella, Jack, was involved in an accident that resulted in a medium risk workplace injury.”

The post said the store would be trading as usual on Friday and thanked emergency services for the prompt response and thorough care.

WorkSafe ACT is investigating the incident and had previously been seeking to speak to a member of the public who may have witnessed the incident. The witness has since come forward.

Firefighters had to manually disassemble the meat mincer at M and K Meats at the Lanyon Market Place after the young worker’s hand became trapped in the meat grinder.

Is the finger test accurate for steak safety? Better to just stick it in

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Objectives: To evaluate the reliability of using the thenar eminence to determine steak doneness.

Design: Double-blinded, cross-sectional study.

Setting: Various home kitchens in Melbourne, Australia.

Participants: Amateur/home cooks.

Main outcome measures: The accuracy of the finger test (the tenseness of the thenar eminence in different hand positions) for determining how well a random beef steak has been cooked (rare v medium-rare v medium v well-done). We also examined whether participants improved with practice and whether the accuracy of the finger test was correlated with age, sex, cooking experience or self-rated steak-cooking ability.

Results: Twenty-six participants completed the study, and showed that they could accurately determine the doneness of a steak with the finger test better than chance (χ2[1, n = 156] = 9.88; P < 0.01). Their overall accuracy, however, was low (36%). There was no correlation between accuracy in application of the finger test with the other collected participant and steak variables.

Conclusions: The finger test can be used by amateur cooks to determine beef steak doneness. However, the low overall accuracy of the test suggests that more invasive tests are to be recommended for determining steak doneness for its health benefits.

Studying the Thenar Eminence of Amateur cooKs (STEAK) study: a double-blinded, cross-sectional study

Toby I Vinycomb, Amanda M-Y Tan, Manu Bhatnagar and Joon Ming Wong

Med J Aust 2015; 203 (11): 467-469

https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2015/203/11/studying-thenar-eminence-amateur-cooks-steak-study-double-blinded-cross

Don’t pick nose and get finger out of ear; top food safety tips for Indian street food vendors

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Douglas Powell

The millions of food vendors peddling tasty morsels from roadside stalls and rickshaws across India have long been an emblem of the country’s boisterous, chaotic spirit.

But now, Indian officials have a stern message for these often-unregulated roadside chefs: Wash your hands after using the toilet. Don’t sneeze into the food. And, above all, please don’t pick your nose.

Launched by India’s Food Safety and Standards Authority and the National Association of Street Vendors of India, the seminar offered a primer on safe drinking water and disposable gloves, along with a list of food-handling do’s and don’ts.

Number one on the forbidden list? Don’t pick your nose. Also banned are cleaning one’s ears, smoking while handling food and spitting into the wash basin or sink.

The goal of the program is to create “safe zones” in popular areas, but is it really possible to sanitize street food in India, where suspending any fastidious concern for hygiene has always been part of the deal?

Data? Chefs can tell beef is safe by ‘doneness’

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Douglas Powell

In the subdued stories about needle tenderized beef and the risk of Shiga-toxin producing E. coli, state-sponsored jazz (NPR) quotes Chef Bruce Mattel, who’s associate dean for food production at the Culinary Institute of America, as saying that, “An experienced cook can assess ‘doneness’ by the firmness of the product.”

Mattel redeems himself by saying “it is always best for everyone, including professionals, to use a thermometer.”

Stick it in.

A history of human fingers found in fast food

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Douglas Powell

On March 22, 2005, Anna Ayala claimed she found a finger in a bowl of chili at a San Jose Wendy’s restaurant. The finger became the talk of the Internet and late-night talk shows, spawned numerous bizarre tips and theories about the source of the finger, and led to dozens of copycat claims. Wendy’s lost tens of millions of dollars.

Turns out the finger belonged to a co-worker of Ayala’s husband who severed it during a construction accident and was planted in the chili in a misguided attempt to extort money from Wendy’s.

In Jan. 2006, Ayala, 40, was sentenced to nine years; the hubby got more than 12 years.

NPR revisited the chili-finger story last week as part of its history of human fingers found in fast food.

Among those making the list:

A Michigan teen says he found a finger in his Arby’s sandwich last week. "The piece appeared to be the back of a finger, including the pad and extending beyond the first knuckle.”

An Ohio man bit into his Arby’s sandwich in 2004 and reportedly found "a piece of flesh about three-fourths of an inch long." When health investigators spoke with the manager, they saw a bandage on the manager’s thumb. Turns out, he had sliced his thumb skin while shredding lettuce but reportedly didn’t throw away the bin of lettuce.

In 2005, Clarence Stowers found a finger in his custard at Kohl’s Frozen Custard in Wilmington, N.C.. But not before eating all the ice cream off the finger, first. (He reportedly thought it was candy and didn’t realize it was a human appendage until later.) Turns out a worker had lost part of his finger in the custard machine and Stowers was unfortunate enough to find it. Later, Stowers kept the finger for evidence for so long that the it was too late for the employee to get his finger reattached.

A California inmate, Felipe Rocha, was eating dinner in March 2005 when he "chewed on a crunchy object" in his cornbread and discovered a fingertip, according to the lawsuit he later filed and obtained by the AP. The inmate’s attorney said Rocha is a vegetarian and lost 15 pounds in six days because he couldn’t eat after the incident.

In 2006, an Indiana diner found a finger on his TGI Friday’s burger after a restaurant employee accidentally cut it in the kitchen, according to an AP story at the time. "The manager didn’t even know it happened until he got to the hospital," the TGI Friday’s spokeswoman said.

Wendy’s chili again used for criminal activity

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Douglas Powell

Turns out the finger belonged to a co-worker of Ayala’s husband who severed it during a construction accident and was planted in the chili in a misguided attempt to extort money from Wendy’s.

In Jan. 2006, Ayala, 40, was sentenced to nine years; the hubby got more than 12 years.

Two days ago, police in York, Pennsylvania, charged Shelby Lyn Adams, 40 (righ, exactly as shown), of York, with killing her 90-year-old grandmother, Ada Adams, by poisoning her Wendy’s chili with morphine three years ago in York Township.

The investigation lasted about three years — set back by the lengthy gathering of scientific evidence and a change in investigators because of a promotion in 2010, said Chief Thomas Gross with York Area Regional Police.

"The detectives did a thorough job at the scene, which was difficult
considering the death of a 90-year-old woman with no real evidence of a disturbance," Gross said Thursday afternoon.

Police also had to wait on autopsy and forensic results from vomit on Ada Adams’ blouse, which showed the plant substances found in Wendy’s chili, according to court documents.

Gross said that suspicious family members were "very persistent in getting justice for their mother."

Lamb on a shovel in a fire pit: finger test insufficient

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Douglas Powell

Once the kid goes to sleep, Amy and I usually adjourn to the bedroom, no matter how early, and chill.

I go through my ritual of flipping through bad TV while Amy does fascinating farm animal things on Facebook.

Last night, my flipping took me to the Primal Grill With Steven Raichlen, where the dude was cooking lamb chops on a shovel in a fire pit.

Apparently, by holding the shovel over the open wood fire, the smoke curls up over the shovel to add a robust flavor to the chops.

This guy’s got way too much time on his hands.

To check if the lamb was properly cooked, he pushed his finger into a chop, proclaimed it “spongy” and therefore done.

However you want to cook meat – with a shovel, a pick-axe, a V-8 engine — use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to ensure a safe food temperature.

Simply Recipes explains how to use fingers to test if meat is cooked (total BS)

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Douglas Powell

In the expanding category of really bad food safety advice is this entry from Simply Recipes:

There are two basic methods to test for how done your meat is while you are cooking it – use a meat thermometer, or press on the meat with your finger tips. The problem with the meat thermometer approach is that when you poke a hole into the meat with a thermometer, it can let juices escape, juices that you would rather have stay in the meat. For this reason, most experienced cooks rely on a "finger test" method, especially on steaks (whole roasts are better tested with a thermometer).

For example, the story explains that to test for raw: Open the palm of your hand. Relax the hand. Take the index finger of your other hand and push on the fleshy area between the thumb and the base of the palm. Make sure your hand is relaxed. This is what raw meat feels like.

There’s more. This is what Johnny Cash and I think (below). Stick it in. Use a thermometer.

Thanks to another barfblog.com reader for the tip.

New iFSN infosheet — Dirty Finger Al

Posted on September 6, 2007 by Ben Chapman

One of the best ever monikers in any food safety story came out courtesy of our friends at healthinspection.com. Dirty Finger Al inspired today’s infosheet which can be found here.

Dirty Finger Al got his name because he is allegedly “grotesque in his hygiene because of filthy hands and fingers and open, oozing sores while cooking.” And he’s a chef. Yum.

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