Q: Isn’t September “National Food Safety Education Month”? What’s the focus this year? This is always a good time for me to reinforce some basic food safety principles with my food service staff.

A: You’re right! This year’s theme is “Food Safety Thrives When You Focus on Five.” It’s emphasizing these five barriers that food services should address in order to keep food safe:

• purchasing food from unsafe sources,

• failing to cook food adequately,

• holding food at incorrect temperatures,

• using contaminated equipment

• practicing poor personal hygiene.

As part of the month-long campaign, free weekly training activities and free posters that reinforce the theme can be downloaded at: http://www.servsafe.com/nfsem.

During the past few weeks with the H1N1 issue, we’ve certainly heard a lot over all of the media on the importance of good personal hygiene, so I’m not going to discuss that anymore. However, “Avoiding Time-Temperature Abuse” is an area that I observe everywhere — not just in a food service. Some food requires time and temperature control to keep it safe. It is called TCS food (Time and Temperature Control for Safety). Disease-causing pathogens can grow well in TCS food when it is kept at temperatures between 41 and 135 degrees. This temperature range is known as the temperature danger zone. Cooking, cooling and holding TCS food the right way can help to keep it safe. Here’s some basic principles to follow:

Cooking: Cook food to the following internal temperatures for at least 15 seconds: poultry, 165 degrees; ground meat, 155 degrees; fish, 145 degrees; pork and beef (steaks, roasts or chops), 145 degrees.

Cooling: Never cool food at room temperature. Never cool large amounts of hot food in a cooler or refrigerator. To cool food properly, make sure you cool food from 135 to 70 degrees within two hours. Then cool food to 41 degrees or lower in the next four hours. This can be done by cooling the pot of food in an ice-water bath (stirring it often to cool quickly), pouring the food in a shallow pan that is no more than 2 inches deep, or cutting the food up into smaller pieces (such as a roast or turkey).

Holding food when serving: Keep hot food at 135 degrees or higher and cold food at 41 degrees or lower.

Reheating: Heat food to an internal temperature of 165 degrees or 15 seconds within two hours.

Here’s a little quiz for you to see if you really got it — read this story and decide whether the food is safe to eat:

On Saturday morning, Clay prepared a double batch of chili. He took half of the chili and decided to save it for lunch the next day. At noon, he put the pot of chili in ice water to cool. When he checked the chili at 2 p.m., the chili had cooled to 68 degrees. He put the pot of chili in the refrigerator. When Clay checked the chili at 5 p.m., the temperature was 38 degrees.

The next day, Clay reheated the chili to 155 degrees and was ready to eat. Is it safe?

Answer: The food is not safe to eat. Clay did cool the chili correctly; but he made a mistake when he failed to reheat the food to the correct temperature. The chili should have been reheated to 165 degrees.

— Susan Krumm is an Extension agent in family and consumer sciences with K-State Research and Extension-Douglas County, 2110 Harper St. She can be reached at 843-7058.