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Wedding guests poisoned!
 Maude |
 Robert |
 Beryl |
 Ralph |
CHARACTERS:
Beryl is the caterer at a local club and has been involved in catering for the past 15 years, although she has no particular qualifications.
Maude is a friend of Beryl and has no experience in commercial food preparation.
Ralph is a first year apprentice chef and also enrolled in a course at TAFE.
Robert is the Environmental Surveillance Officer and the Narrator of the story.
INTRODUCTION:
Robert: On Friday, at 1.00pm, (the day before a wedding reception for about 150 people), four boxes containing 40 frozen no. 11 chickens were delivered to the local Club. The boxes were stacked one on top of the other and placed in the freezer, which had a warped lid, thus affecting the operating temperature of the unit.
On Saturday, at about 5.00pm, 150 people are expected at the wedding reception at the Club.
It’s now 8.00am on Saturday, the morning of the reception. Beryl walks into the kitchen with her friend Maude and the apprentice chef, Ralph to prepare the evening meal.
Maude: What’s on the menu for tonight, Beryl?
Beryl: Curried prawns and rice for the entrée, roast beef or roast chicken with vegetables for the main course and apple pie with cream for dessert.
Maude: Sounds lovely.
Robert: Beryl turns to see Ralph at the fridge. She yells out.........
Beryl: Ralph! Ralph! What are you doing?
Ralph: I’m putting the chickens in the fridge.
Beryl: Whatever for?
Ralph: To defrost.
Beryl: We haven’t got time for that. The reception is tonight, not next week! Just place them in their boxes on the kitchen sink, they’ll be right.
Ralph: But at TAFE they told us to defrost food such as chickens in the fridge.
Maude: Ralph, I’ve raised seven kids and I’ve always defrosted chickens on the sink. Of course, I always keep them in the plastic bag to stop the germs from jumping onto the food. It must be right, because I haven’t poisoned my family yet.
Ralph: Maude – correct food preparation is as important at home as it is in restaurants. You were just lucky. Bacteria like Salmonella occur naturally in meats such as chicken, they just don’t jump onto food. Given the right conditions, these bacteria can grow to a very high number in a short period of time.
Maude: But how can these bacteria go through plastic?
Ralph: They don’t go through the plastic; they are on the meat already.
Maude: Oh, phooey!
Ralph: Forget it Maude. Beryl, why don’t we use the microwave to defrost the chickens or at least place them under cold running water?
Beryl: (Screaming) Ralph if you don’t stop yapping and get to work the ranks of the unemployed will swell by one!
Robert: The proper defrosting of raw and cooked foods is very important. It requires advance planning though because the ideal method of defrosting large portions of meat is within a refrigerator or cool room. This could take days. Other accepted methods of defrosting include the use of the microwave oven or immersion under continuous cold running water or as part of the cooking process. But this is restricted to small portions of meat or food.
For two hours – 8.00am to 10.00am, the defrosting chickens stand on the bench at room temperature. Ralph is flicking through the newspaper and gives out a ghastly sigh.
Maude: What’s wrong Ralph?
Ralph: Listen to this story.
Wang Guang’s Restaurant in a Central Chinese Province was making a fortune serving buns stuffed with spicy filling until authorities discovered the stuffing was made of human flesh supplied by the local crematorium.
Beryl: Ralph, unpack the chooks and start stuffing them with that garlic and herb mix. Maude, can you give him a hand please?
Maude: Sure, luv.
Ralph: Is it a spicy stuffing?
Beryl: Any more lip from you, son, and you might become the stuffing.
Robert: Ralph reluctantly does as he is told but then walks over to the hand basin and starts searching.
Beryl: Ralph, what are you doing now?
Ralph: I’m going to wash my hands.
Beryl: How are we going to have a meal for 147 people ready by 5.00pm if the only stuffing you’re doing is stuffing around?
Ralph: But shouldn’t we wash our hands before commencing food preparation. And gloves, where are the gloves? My TAFE teacher has told us to wear gloves when we are handling cooked foods and doing things like stuffing chickens.
Maude: Here you are Luv, use these rubber wash-up gloves.
Ralph: No, not that type of glove! Disposable rubber or plastic gloves – they’re really cheap.
Beryl: Gloves, huh? I’ve worked as a cook for 15 years and never worn gloves yet. No one has ever come to me to complain that I’ve poisoned them. Take some good advice Luv, stop taking so much notice of the books and your teacher and learn what cooking is really about, here with me. Anyway, your hands look pretty clean to me.
Ralph: But Staphylococcus on our hands and in cuts can infect the food!
Beryl: No more “buts”! I don’t want to hear any more about Salmonella or Staphil, stapho – whatever the b........word is. Start stuffing NOW!
Robert: Ralph looks at Maude and notices a large bandaid on her hand. The Bandaid looks pretty old and dirty and Maude has to keep pressing it down to stop one end from lifting off. Ralph wants to warn Maude that she shouldn’t be touching the food while she has cuts or sores on her hand but he is worried that Beryl will go off her brain.
Ralph starts stuffing but soon realises that the chickens had not properly thawed.
Beryl: Maude, turn the ovens on to 90 degrees Celsius and set the timer for 1 hour, would you please luv?
Ralph: Isn’t that too low Beryl? I think it should be at least 175 degrees Celsius and a Size 11 chicken should be cooked for at least 88 minutes.
Ralph: But I thought the correct cooking temperature and cooking time was important for all food.
Beryl: Cooking is an art, a feeling. You don’t get it from your first year at Tech. Ralphy. Anyway, the Club has a bad power supply, which causes power surges in the ovens. The temperatures in the oven can easily rise and burn the food. I’d rather err on the low side so the chickens aren’t spoiled.
Maude: Can’t take a bit of blood in your meat hey Ralph.
Robert: So far the chickens have been incorrectly stored in the freezer after delivery, incorrectly defrosted, contaminated by a cut hand and also incorrectly cooked.
Beryl takes the cooked chickens from the oven and places them on the same bench as that used for the raw chickens during the stuffing process. This further contaminates the cooked chicken through cross-contamination. Separate surfaces should be used for the preparation of raw and cooked food.
Beryl: Maude, can you break the chickens into pieces, please and get young Einstein to help you.
Maude: Sure luv, come on Ralph.
Robert: Maude is about to start work, but Ralph’s earlier criticisms are still fresh in her mind. She checks that her hands look clean before handling the cooked chicken. There’s an almighty scream.
Maude: Ahhhhhh..........h!
Beryl: Whaaaaa .........t?
Ralph: The bandaid on her hand. Where is it?
Beryl: She had it on when she was stuffing the chickens.
Maude: It must have dropped off in the stuffing. Quick, grab a fork and start searching.
Beryl: But which chook is it, Maude?
Robert: Some time later, Ralph holds the bandaid high above his head like a trophy. A stain of yellow pus is still evident on the bandaid.
Beryl: At last, you’ve done something right. We would have been in real trouble if somebody ended up chewing on that bandaid.
Robert: Ralph whispers to himself.
Ralph: I think you’ve done enough already to be in trouble.
Beryl: You say something Ralphy?
Ralph: No, I’ll go and wash my hands now.
Beryl: All right, let’s please “Ralph know-it-all” and wash our hands before we start breaking up the chickens.
Robert: Beryl and Maude grab a piece of old Sunlight soap. They give their hands a quick lather, rinse, then dry them with a tea towel previously used to wipe the bench of moisture left by the thawing chickens.
Ralph: I think we should have used liquid soap for washing and paper towels for drying the hands.
Beryl: Oh! For crying out loud, Ralph, aren’t you ever satisfied? Soap is soap. Right, Maude?
Maude: Right, Beryl.
Robert: Hand washing is critical to good food hygiene. Liquid soap and paper towels help to avoid cross contamination to the hands.
Without further ado, the 40 chickens are broken up. The next step is to cool the chickens as quickly as possible.
Ralph: Have you got any wire racks or large flat trays, Beryl?
Maude: What for, Epstein?
Ralph: No Maude, that’s Einstein.
Maude: Oh, sorry.
Beryl: We’ve got enough deep dishes to store all the chicken.
Ralph: But piling the hot chickens one on top of the other will prevent effective cooling. The cold air won’t be able to get through.
Maude: that’s OK. Then it won’t take much to reheat when we’re ready to serve. Right Beryl?
Beryl: Right, Maude!
Ralph: We should reduce the temperature of hot food to 5 degrees Celsius within 4 hours of cooking. Storing the chicken badly will only leave it in the temperature danger zone.
Maude: The what?
Ralph: The temperature danger zone. The temperature between 5 degrees and 60 degrees Celsius.
Beryl: OK, just to please you Ralph, I’ll place the chicken on the bottom shelves of the refrigerator so it will cool quickly, all right?
Ralph: No, sorry Beryl. The cooked chicken and any cooked food for that matter should be stored on the upper shelves, to prevent contamination from raw foods such as dripping blood.
Beryl: Hey, Ralph.
Ralph: Yes Beryl.
Beryl: Sit on it.
Maude: Good one, Beryl.
Robert: The chickens were placed in the refrigerator until 4.00pm. They were then returned to the oven and reheated at 49 degrees Celsius for 1 hour.
Ralph: The food should be reheated to above 60 degrees Celsius. You’re allowing the food to stand in the temperature danger zone again.
Maude: I suppose the rules say something about reheating the food, hey Ralphy?
Ralph: Yes, Maude, actually it’s reheat cold food to 60 degrees within one hour.
Robert: At 5.00pm, the pieces of chicken were placed on plates and covered with gravy. The vegetables were then added and the meals left sitting on the kitchen bench. The bride and groom were late and the main course was not served until about 5.45 pm.
Beryl & Maude sit in the kitchen proud of the day’s work. They enjoy watching the guests satisfy their appetites on their sumptuous meal.
Maude: Well, that wasn’t much different to cooking for my seven kids, Beryl.
Beryl: No. It’s easy really, and to think I’ve been able to do all this without going to the Tech College like our young hot shot. Honestly, Ralph, you’ll make a good chef one day if you just forget about all these so-called hazards like bacteria, temperature danger zone and cross contamination. Concentrate on being a gourmet like us. Anyway if anything goes wrong you won’t have to worry, I’ll take full responsibility.
Robert: Over the following three days some 60 of the guests became ill. The main symptoms were stomach cramps with diarrhoea and about one third suffering vomiting. Other common symptoms included severe headaches, chills and shivering, fever and aches and pains all over the body.
Symptoms began to appear from about noon Sunday, with the onset of diarrhoea.
The illness lasted from 1 to 7 days in most cases; 2 to 5 days’ duration being more common. Some people were still ill 8 days later and several with mild symptoms up to two weeks later.
The next week the Councils Health Surveyor advised Beryl, Maude and Ralph of the many cases of food poisoning from the reception dinner.
Beryl: How could it have happened? I’ve done hundreds of these receptions without any problems at all. You sure it wasn’t the grog?
Maude: Yeah, a lot of them were really into the grog. I even saw one bloke throw up at the end of the night.
Robert: That’s true, and in his case it probably saved him from the food poisoning. That man’s little 10-month-old baby was very sick just after sucking on the chicken bone.
Beryl: Ralph, it’s your fault. All your fussing made me lose concentration.
Ralph: You still don’t understand, do you Beryl?
Beryl: Oh, what would you know!
Adapted from script written by Robert van Hese – Wyong Council Environmental Surveillance Officer.
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