Banquet changes pot-pie cooking instructions
— -- Most people know to check the Thanksgiving turkey with a thermometer to make sure it's fully cooked and safe to eat. But a microwaveable pot pie?
That's what the maker of Banquet frozen pies is telling consumers to do after salmonella bacteria in some pies led to a $30 million recall in October. The episode was linked to reports of 272 illnesses in 35 states.
ConAgra Foods cag, which earlier said sickness was likely related to undercooked pies, now says its previous cooking directions were confusing and that Banquet pies should be cooked to 165 degrees, a temperature high enough to kill bacteria.
New Banquet packages also include more explicit instructions for cooking in microwaves of varying wattages. Similar changes are in store for hundreds of other ConAgra frozen foods, including Healthy Choice and Kid Cuisine lines.
The old Banquet package said on the front: "Ready in 4 minutes. Microwaveable." On the back, in smaller type, the instructions specified four minutes in "medium" or "high" wattage microwaves and six minutes in "low" wattage ones.
The new package recommends cooking four to six minutes in a microwave with 1,100 watts or more, and not in lower-powered ones.
The four-minute sticker had been on the product for a year and was added for marketing reasons "without a lot of process," says Joan Menke-Schaenzer, ConAgra chief quality officer. Such tags aren't allowed anymore, she says.
The meat in the pot pies was cooked, but other ingredients were raw, such as flour, which can contain salmonella. Better instructions aren't enough for the thousands of products marketed as microwaveable that contain raw ingredients, says Doug Powell, a food-safety expert at Kansas State University .
"The stuff for microwaves should be cooked," he says. "These are products that kids are coming home from school and popping in a microwave. Should they know the wattage?"
Plus, consumers don't tend to use meat thermometers for much other than the Thanksgiving turkey, he says.
ConAgra isn't the only food company rewriting cooking directions. General Mills gis, which recalled 5 million frozen Totino's and Jeno's pizzas in November because of potential E. coli O157:H7 contamination, plans new pizza packaging that will say: "Do not microwave." Pre-recall, it said, "Microwave preparation not recommended."
The old instruction was meant to entice consumers to cook with regular ovens for the best eating experience, says spokesman Tom Forsythe. The new label may also enhance safety because regular ovens tend to cook more thoroughly, he says.
No contamination source was pinpointed for the ConAgra or General Mills recalls. Salmonella was found in turkey pies, ConAgra says. No E. coli was found in the pizzas, which had cooked pepperoni, Forsythe says.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which regulates meat and poultry recalls, required ConAgra to revise its labeling but didn't tell the company what to say, says the USDA's Daniel Engeljohn. That wasn't the case with General Mills, he says.