Questions about food safety

[Yumad]

This is my first post, so hello.

This is actually a question for my father making sausages and I am concerned about the way he cures the meat before cooking.

He uses one of the insta cure mixes to cure the meat, which seems fine but he leaves the meat in a large bowl on a tabletop with ice water overnight stating that this is sufficient to prevent bacteria growth. The bowl is enormous, so even if the ice water would have kept a normal sized bowl cool the upper portions of the bowl are not even close to refridgeration temperatures. The meat is then cased and smoked but he takes a significant amount of time to do all of these steps, it's done over multiple days, and I'm curious as to whether this is safe or not. I'm mostly concerned with the practice of leaving the uncased meat on a counter in a huge bowl that is not at refridgeration temperatures.

He is very stubborn and it is difficult to get him to change how he does something, but I don't want someone getting botulism poisoning from his poor choices especially since he gives the finished sausage out to people outside of his family.

[RodinBangkok]

Having grown up around these techniques, and also seeing a lot of handling like this in Asia, my recommendations are along the lines of where was the original meat from, and who and how was it processed.
Todays food safety regs are so exaggerated, as it seems everyone in the chain calculates an exposure time, then puts another just in case buffer on top of that such that the cooking temps and exposure times are way out of line with what we older folks are comfortable dealing with.

Now having said that the other factor here is where did the mince come from. If it was ground from a fresh kill under his own control, that is one thing. However if it was purchased as mince from anywhere its a dangerous method. I simply don't trust any pre minced meats, and especially those from these huge processing facilities that exist. The supply chain is so long now in these places, along with the huge quantities they are dealing with I would not trust any pre minced products. Pretty much the same with cryovac sealed cuts, I have no idea how old it is when it was packaged, how it was handled, etc. I'm spoiled with fresh market access here in Asia, and love the ability to buy known fresh whole primals.

From a professional standpoint selling commercially, we follow guidelines we have set up in our HAACP plan, so my thoughts above are about the older home type sausage maker only, and I'm trying to add some value to the answer rather than just saying no its bad don't do it.

I would try and explain to him that the meat he's using may not be able to withstand the prolonged temp exposures, as it may already be on the edge of going bad when he gets it, or something like that to help him understand the older techniques are not something to apply to todays store bought meats.
Hope that helps, and welcome to the forums.

[Yumad]

Having grown up around these techniques, and also seeing a lot of handling like this in Asia, my recommendations are along the lines of where was the original meat from, and who and how was it processed.
Todays food safety regs are so exaggerated, as it seems everyone in the chain calculates an exposure time, then puts another just in case buffer on top of that such that the cooking temps and exposure times are way out of line with what we older folks are comfortable dealing with.

Now having said that the other factor here is where did the mince come from. If it was ground from a fresh kill under his own control, that is one thing. However if it was purchased as mince from anywhere its a dangerous method. I simply don't trust any pre minced meats, and especially those from these huge processing facilities that exist. The supply chain is so long now in these places, along with the huge quantities they are dealing with I would not trust any pre minced products. Pretty much the same with cryovac sealed cuts, I have no idea how old it is when it was packaged, how it was handled, etc. I'm spoiled with fresh market access here in Asia, and love the ability to buy known fresh whole primals.

From a professional standpoint selling commercially, we follow guidelines we have set up in our HAACP plan, so my thoughts above are about the older home type sausage maker only, and I'm trying to add some value to the answer rather than just saying no its bad don't do it.

I would try and explain to him that the meat he's using may not be able to withstand the prolonged temp exposures, as it may already be on the edge of going bad when he gets it, or something like that to help him understand the older techniques are not something to apply to todays store bought meats.
Hope that helps, and welcome to the forums.

Hey, thanks for the welcome and the information.

The meat that he uses is a full pork shoulder, as a whole piece. I don't know how that changes things, but their defrosting practices are pretty bad too. Countertop, pulling defrosted layers off every now and then.