Salad packaged with raw meat: is it safe?
Sometimes I see in supermarkets (in Italy) packages in which rocket salad is sold together with raw beef, like in this picture:
This is clearly meant to be prepared in the form of tagliata con rucola, an Italian dish made with beefsteak cut in stripes and rocket:
As you can see, the salad is normally served raw with tagliata. The supermarkets seem OK with that, but this practice triggers my food safety alert: is it safe to consume salad that has been in contact with raw meat? Should I worry about eating it?
EDIT: further information:
- these packages are found in the refrigerator aisle.
- the bottom label says (among other things) "store at 0--4 degrees Celsius [32-39 Fahrenheit] -- cook before eating". It is not clear from the wording if this warning applies to the salad as well.
- the label in the top right says "20% discount -- the marked price already includes discount". It doesn't specify if it is discounted for quick sale or for other reasons. In any case, I have also seen regular packages without the discount tag, and with the current day marked as packaging date.
- It is not customary here to put salad or other edible items as decoration -- I have never seen this done with other fresh food on sale.
- upon request, full translation of the white sticker. The notes in brackets are mine.
Il gigante [supermarket name] - the fresh food specialists. Corso Marche [address of the supermarket]
Net Wt 0.354 kg price 4.43 EUR
tare 0.032 EUR/Kg 12.50
prepackaged on: 04 August 2014
Tagliata con rucola [name of the dish, see picture above]
Meat preparation NC16 [not 100% sure about the code, it's blurry. No idea what it means, I assume it's some bureaucratic category for the meat]
Ingredients: bovine meat, rucola, sunflower oil, salt
Store at 0-4 degrees [32-39F]. To be consumed after cooking. Cooking suggestions: in pan, 3 minutes each side. In oven 175 degrees [350F] for 30 minutes. Produced and prepackaged for immediate sale by "Il gigante", Turin.
- Note that I did not take this picture myself; this one comes from the internet. I can take a similar one the next time I visit my local supermarket, but it's probably going to be 7-10 days from now.
Best Answer
What you're looking at is called (in the US) "cross contamination". You have a food generally considered "unsafe" (beef) that is coming into contact with a food generally considered "safe" (salad greens).
This contact makes the greens "unsafe" to consume raw.
Cross-contamination is the transfer of harmful bacteria to food from other foods, cutting boards, utensils, etc., if they are not handled properly. This is especially true when handling raw meat, poultry, and seafood, so keep these foods and their juices away from already cooked or ready-to-eat foods and fresh produce.
The rule in the US is to always keep these products away from each other so that the "safe" foods stay safe.
The only way to make the greens safe to eat is to cook them, thereby killing off the bacteria that may have been transferred to them in the juices of the meat.
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Answer 2
No, it's not safe to eat those greens without cooking, for exactly the same reason it's unsafe to eat the meat that's touching them without cooking it. If you have to cook the meat before eating to make it safe, you would have to cook anything it's touched to make it safe. Maybe it's not quite as risky as eating the meat, but it's still risky.
They could expect you to discard the greens (if they're just for looks), they could expect you to cook the greens, or they could just not care that much or be that aware about food safety. I don't think there's a good explanation; you can speculate for yourself about which of those is most likely given what you know about the store.
Answer 3
There are equal concerns with fresh and now apparently even frozen vegies in the US. I have not seen food packaged this way although each food has an equal concern. I will address only the vegetables, but note that given current concerns, just tossing out the pretty greens that have touched the meat would not address the issue, if the meat is not going to be cooked well. There are concerns with the lettuce, sprouts, cilantro, etc. I have read that the more a food is handled in the chain of production, the more likely the contamination. That makes sense. I cannot bring myself to eat any type of uncooked sprout and I buy canned. No one wants a plate of boiled sprouts, lettuce and whatever else as a salad. Here is the US cite: http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm114299.htm
I do not believe there are clear answers, common sense has to be used, wash it if it is possible. I wash all such vegetables in very hot water and I use soap, rinse well, dry, and refrigerate. I wash foods I am going to peel (no, not garlic or ginger, not yet anyway). I discard outer leaves of a head of lettuce. Why take a chance when we can take some reasonable steps. At least when you get done washing, rinsing and crisping up: make that salad, you have done your best by all reasonable means.
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Images: ROMAN ODINTSOV, Craig Adderley, Bich Tran, Lukas