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When cooking poultry, chefs know choosing the right bird will affect the outcome of a final dish. That’s why most recipes call for a fryer, roaster, or other class—terms based on the age and sex of the bird and printed on poultry labels.  While breeding and raising practices have improved over the years, the definitions for these terms have remained roughly the same since the 1970’s.

Special holiday series – Blog 1 of 5

As we look forward to spending the holidays with friends and family and making meals and memories together, we all want to put good food on the table and do it safely.  We especially want to keep the threat of food poisoning at bay.  Over the next few days, we will share some delicious low-cost holiday recipes with some simple food safety tips to help you prepare healthy and safe holiday meals. The first recipe below talks about preparing and cooking a turkey safely. Recipes to follow will include Grandma’s Stuffing, Baked Apples and Sweet Potatoes, Green Bean Sauté, and Crunchy Pumpkin Pie.

Best wishes for a happy and healthy holiday season!

It was a chilly but beautiful Friday when the Food Safety Discovery Zone joined vendors at the USDA Harvest Festival to celebrate the end of a successful growing season for the People’s Garden. Even among the jazz band, petting zoo, and the smell of kettle corn in the air, the giant yellow Food Safety Discovery Zone was impossible to miss. Designed to make food safety education fun for kids, the 40-foot long mobile exhibit attracted masses of visitors of all ages who wanted to know how to safely prepare the food they were buying at the festival or for the upcoming holidays.

The USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline has been answering consumer questions related to Holiday meals for over 25 years. Of course, we get the usual questions about buying, thawing and roasting a turkey. But we also get some of the same not-so-typical questions each year. You may have had these questions yourself.

Nisha Antoine has always understood the relationship between personal health and public health. As a child with asthma, she spent a lot of time in the emergency room, and she was inspired by her doctors and nurses to want to take care of other children as an adult. From elementary school through college, Nisha enjoyed studying biology, a path she knew would eventually lead to a career of caring for others.

Cross posted from the FoodSafety.gov blog:

Okay, so it’s your turn to host the annual Thanksgiving feast. Aunt Sara has been cooking turkeys for 40 years, and Cousin Rachel is a gourmet cook. Can you tackle a turkey without being traumatized?

Yes you can!  Believe it or not, taking care of “Tom” isn’t that tough, and it can actually be FUN!  Just follow USDA’s “Turkey FUNdamentals” and your bird will turn out fine. The USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline says that each November, both novice and experienced cooks have the same basic questions on preparing turkey. Here they are:

The USDA’s Food Safety Discovery Zone (FSDZ) kicked off the 2011-2012 season on Thursday, October 13, 2011, by wheeling in to Lake Anne Elementary School in Reston, Va., and educating 280 students about food safety!

Throughout the day, the FSDZ staff gave students an exciting tour of the Food Safety Mobile and educated them about the four basic steps of preventing foodborne illness: Clean, Separate, Cook and Chill.

The students were especially fascinated by the “Germs that Glow in the Dark” station, because they were able to see how many germs were present on hands that weren’t properly washed under the ultraviolet light. “As you can see, it is really important to wash your hands properly!” Public Affairs Specialist Mary Harris told the group.