I heard in the news that there has been a nationwide salmonella outbreak and 35 million pounds of ground turkey had been recalled. While in the kitchen today I noticed that they were dumping the turkey I made on Monday! I was shocked! I had never experienced an outbreak before and of course never experienced the precautions an institution had to take to ensure food safety. I have heard stories, but seeing it first hand is a real jaw dropper. During our Servsafe class, Chef Teri explained that because we were not able to check the packaging of the already cooked turkey to see if it was part of the defective batch we had to assume the worse and dump everything. This meant calling in any turkey that was sent to shelters. Dumping whatever we had in storage. And any food that was prepared using the turkey as an ingredient had to be dumped also. That was a big deal. She mentioned that the turkey was scheduled to go out to some summer school children today and because of the recall we had to find a plan B to feed these kids. We had prepared almost 100 servings of chicken wings to replace the “bad” turkey. 100 servings that could have fed a second set of 100 children. Food borne illness is really a big deal even when the source of the problem is not within your institution. Dumping all that food costs. Food, time, utilities, and opportunity costs. I was grateful for the first hand experience, but still upset at the whole idea that someone out there didn’t take the right precautions to prevent such an ordeal. It hit home. The experience represents the wholistic training you get from being a part of the program. Just staying home and reading it in the book would not have given me such a deepend outlook on the issue of foodborne illnesses.