Juicy red hamburgers and soft boiled eggs may make your mouth water, but be warned, Dartmouth Dining Services employees may tell you your favorite foods are hazardous to your health and refuse to cook them.
Uncooked, or even undercooked meat, dairy and poultry products are the breeding grounds for a host of bacteria harmful to humans.
Recently, outbreaks of food poisoning caused by Salmonella bacteria throughout the Northeast aboard cruise ships have left numerous persons ill, some seriously.
Over the past year, college students throughout the region have been stricken by food poisoning caused by the Salmonella bacteria.
At Saint Michael's College in Vermont, four students were diagnosed with Salmonella, and at Johnson State College one student died as a result of the bacteria.
For this reason, DDS has posted warning signs in campus dining facilities asking people to not request undercooked foods, like rare hamburgers.
Beef, poultry, eggs and unprocessed milk need to be heated to a minimum temperature of 140 to 180 degrees Fahrenheit in order to destroy bacteria such as Salmonella, which lead to at least 400,000 food poisonings and an estimated 500 deaths annually nationwide.
DDS Director Pete Napolitano said people should be assured that adequate safety precautions are taken to insure DDS is serving healthy foods.
Dining Services requires all food handlers to wear gloves, and requires all cooks to carry food thermometers, Napolitano said. All employees also receive training about the dangers associated with poor food handling, he said.
"Eating rare poultry is very dangerous, eating raw fish is extremely dangerous - and there is little regulation and very little inspection" in some parts of the food industry, Napolitano said.
Napolitano said DDS is therefore careful to purchase its food "from reputable dealers with federal inspectors on site."
While Napolitano says DDS takes adequate safety precautions when preparing food, he is concerned that other independent segments of the community are not so careful.
"I see independent outfits and worry that they are not handling the food well," he said. Cross-contamination from dirty utensils and a lack of running water are problems Napolitano said he sees at many of the barbecues and other feasts around campus.
Gabrielle Lucke, the College's health educator, said students should take precautions when handling their own food as well. She said utensils used on raw meat should be rinsed before being used on cooked meat to prevent the spread of bacteria.
She also said food should be kept cold until it is ready to be cooked and urged those taking picnics to use a cooler with ice.
Lucke praised DDS's efforts to prevent the spreading of the bacteria. "Food poisoning can really cripple an institution," she said.
