food safety and inspection service

It’s a special time of year as we welcome spring and celebrate several holidays. Many families and communities will be celebrating with their Easter, Eid, and Passover traditions. Whether you’re celebrating your Easter dinner with ham, Eid lunch with lamb, or Seder meal with brisket, remember to keep food safety at the forefront.

When it comes to food safety during the big game, you can’t just wing it. Chicken wings are one of the most popular foods to eat during the Super Bowl, and USDA has some tips to keep foodborne illness from intercepting your Super Bowl Sunday.

Pineapple on pizza is up for debate, but food safety is not. When including pizza in your Super Bowl party, make sure food safety is included in the toppings.

Here’s an important Thanksgiving food safety tip that will surprise many: USDA doesn’t recommend stuffing a whole turkey. The practice increases the risk of cross-contamination and takes the turkey longer to cook. Cook stuffing separately instead.

The busiest time of the year for USDA’s Meat and Poultry Hotline is the week before Thanksgiving. Calls, chats and emails are answered by food safety specialists who even work on Thanksgiving Day to ensure your meal is safe.

It’s finally November. To beat the crowds, you rush to your grocery store to buy a turkey. If this is your first time, you’re faced with a dilemma: frozen or fresh?

We use the kitchen sink for food preparation – rinsing produce, cleaning pots and pans, washing utensils that touch raw meat, and more. With these activities come the possibility for foodborne illness-causing bacteria to hang out in the sink too. If proper food preparation safety steps are not followed, these bacteria could cross-contaminate your food and make you sick!

You have a food thermometer and are ready to use it – that’s fantastic! But do you know where to place it in your foods? Correctly placing the food thermometer within food is important to get the most accurate temperature reading. Without proper placement, it’s possible that parts of your food could still be undercooked and, if contaminated, could make you sick.

When you hit the road for that one last camping trip or beach day, bring food safety along to keep foodborne illness in the rearview mirror.

Parents and caregivers should take extra precautions when preparing and packing a school lunch. Flunking in food safety is not an option, especially when children are most vulnerable to foodborne illness.