Remember some of the early franchise fast food restaurants? The oldest was White Castle, founded in 1921. Dairy Queen in 1940. And McDonald’s didn’t come along until 1948, but got revved up in 1955 when Ray Kroc purchased the business from the McDonald brothers.

Others include the regional favorite Burger Boy Food-O-Rama (BBF – Bigger, Better, Faster) and Burger Chef. The last BBF restaurant closed in 1996.

Forgive my reminiscing, but during my teenage years, BBF and Burger Chef were growing like gangbusters, before McDonald’s had reached a full head of steam.

One of the first meals I ever ate on my own, away from home, was at Burger Chef. Specifically, the Burger Chef at the intersection of North High Street and Woodruff Avenue in Columbus when, as a high school freshman, I attended an Ohio FFA competition on the Ohio State campus.

The restaurant is long gone, but I still remember standing in a long line of high school and college students before placing my order for fried chicken with a side of fries.

I also remember the chicken looking undercooked. But having been taught by my mother to clean my plate, it never dawned on me that not everyone prepared food as carefully as my mother.

The next day I alternated runs to the restroom with naps in the upper bunk of my OSU dormitory room. I was so sick I couldn’t attend the FFA sessions that day. My FFA advisor gave me permission to rest up, and I recovered in about 24 hours.

Several years later at OSU, during food supply safety training in vet school, I learned about food-borne diseases such as Salmonella, Campylobacter, Staph, Listeria and E. coli.

America has the safest food supply in the world, but consumers must be knowledgeable and exhibit good judgment around food, as I painfully learned as a country boy visiting the big city.

No matter how much oregano you feed your chickens with the intent of strengthening their immune system to guard them from disease, there are risks associated with consuming chicken that has been improperly cooked.

Salmonella is commonly detected in the feces and GI tract of chickens. When chicken parts have been properly cooked, but placed back on the counter where the meat was prepared for cooking, the odds are pretty good the meat will be contaminated with Salmonella before serving.

Similar risks apply when you order your hamburger cooked medium or rare. From the grinding process, hamburger has many exposed surfaces that can be contaminated by pathogens, throughout a burger patty.

Ordering a medium or medium-rare hamburger is akin to playing Russian roulette. There are two kinds of people who order their hamburgers like this: those that have gotten sick and those who are gonna!

Steaks, on the other hand, are safe to eat when cooked medium-rare, so long as you brown the outside of the steak. The reason is that cooking kills pathogens on the outside of the meat, and the inside of the steak isn’t exposed to pathogens during processing at the packing plant.

I’ll leave you with this word of caution that you probably didn’t realize even needed to be said: The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is warning residents not to kiss their chickens.¹

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) there were, in 2019, over 1,000 reports of Salmonella infections caused by backyard poultry across 49 states – two of them deadly.

Two-thirds of the cases resulted from people touching live chickens or ducks. And a 2016 CDC study² of chicken-related Salmonella cases from 1990 to 2014 found that 13 percent of the cases were due to people puckering up with their feathered friends. You read that correctly. Thirteen percent of backyard chicken owners kiss their chickens! Plus, 46 percent of the study respondents reported keeping the birds in their house.

I can readily believe this because several years ago a client of mine reported that he rented a mobile home on his farm to tenants who nested laying hens in the kitchen drawers. What a morning time-saver that must have been. Eggs from chicken to skillet in no time!

1. This link is no longer available: http://wflanews.iheart.com/featured/pm-tampa-bay-with-ryan-gorman/content/2019-09-17-florida-department-of-agriculture-warns-against-kissing-chickens
2. https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/16/health/cdc-chicken-salmonella-trnd/index.html