Conference turris::cooks

    
    
    DON'T EAT IT - the price of burger isn't worth it!
    
    
    See what you get for not folding your bags and putting them beside 
    the frige! How unamerican ;)!

    
    
>>    See what you get for not folding your bags and putting them beside 
>>   the frige! How unamerican ;)!
    
    Yes, dear.  I'm sorry. :^)
    
    Looks like the dog will eat well tonight! :^)
    
    

    
    But what are you gonna eat?

    The dog of course!!!!! :-}
    
    Ok. don't throw rocks at me...... I'm noted for hating dogs!!!!
    
    REK
    
    PS Dunno about feeding it to the dog... It may not set well with him..

    I think it will be ok for the dog.  I'm not going to give it to her
    RAW.  I'll cook it first, of course.
    
    As for my dinner... looks like kibble again.
    
    Eric

    
    
    If you won't eat it, please don't feed it to the dog!  yuck!
    
    tee hee
    
    
    js

    I WOULD have made a snap decision and either cooked it immediately
    for myself and/or the dog or thrown it out.  I figure cooking would
    immediately kill the microorganisms that might have started growing on
    it whereas putting it into the fridge would allow spoilage to continue.
    
    ed

 I would have put the sniffer to work. If it doesn't smell right, don't
eat it. (As with Ed, I would have cooked it right away if I decided not
to just throw it away.)

    Go ahead, feed it to the dog.  Just make sure you have plenty of rug
    shampoo on hand.  Dogs get sick from rancid food, just as easily as
    humans do. And if she doesn't get sick from the food, the unexpected
    change from her normal food will cause another problem on the other
    end!  Best bet is to toss it.
    Sarah

Re smelling it, that's my first test, too, but it's not reliable. If
something smells bad, it's probably bad, but if it smells ok, it may
not be good.

From my vague understanding, the bacteria which cause the odor are
different from the salmonella and other nasties which poison you. They
all grow better in warm, protein-rich environments, but not at the same
rate, depending on lots of other factors.

If it smells bad, I toss it. But if it smells ok, my decision will be
based on other info, like if I know how long and at what temp it's been
sitting at.

I would toss hamburger which had been standing at room temp for 24
hours regardless of what it smelled like.

RE: .6, .9

Quite to the contrary.  Dogs in their wild state are mainly scavengers.
Partially rotten meat is their natural and preferred food.

--PSW

    THat explains the breath of some of the dogs I have met...
    
    q
    

    re .11
    Wild dogs, I heartily agree.  But today's home pet, if restricted to
    brand-name dog foods, will not tolerate either the spoilage or the
    richness of the meat.  If the basenoter commonly feeds the dog partially
    spoiled meat as part of the regular diet, then there will most likely
    be no ill effects.   Ask any dog owner whose pet has gotten into the
    trash...not a pretty site when you arrive home from work : ) Of course,
    if you own a dingo, coy-dog or wolf, then this doesn't apply.  Anyway,
    at least we can say the human shouldn't eat it...on that we all seem to
    agree!
    Sarah

Sarah may have a point. Don't know about dogs, but we have a cat. One
evening we had a pork roast for dinner. Gave the cat some table scraps
(she gets these often enough with no problem). Within an hour or so,
she had thrown up dinner. Within six hours, both my wife and I had
moderately severe symptoms of salmonella poisoning (nausea, vomiting,
diarrhea, chills). Do cats in the wild tend to eat their meat fresher
than dogs?

    Mike,
    I also have a cat, and he will turn his nose up at something the dogs
    devour.  I would guess that cats are better hunters than dogs, and
    therefore get ther meat fresher.  Dogs are scavengers, generally, and
    would tolerate less-fresh meat.  Humans probably fall somewhere in
    between on the tolerance scale. I wonder if any anthropologists ever
    did such a study? Might be a good subject for a paper : ) 
    Sarah

    I read (somewhere...) that cats can detect bacteria on their food much
    easier than we can - which is why a cat may not eat the food thats been
    sitting out for a few hours. It's possible that dogs aren't as quick to
    determine the germy growth on their food. 
    
    Just my $.02.
    
    beth

    My Mom was in the restaurant business for years.
    
    Her rule is:
    
    a.  smell it raw, if still in doubt,
    b.  smell a small amount cooked
    
    She says cooked protein always smells bad.
    
    Personally, I'd still toss meat that was at room temperature for 24
    hours.
    
    Laura

    and by now that hamburger would be pretty bad...
    
    :-)

    SKIPPING THROUGH ALL THE REPLIES:  The fat content in hamburgler is NOT
    good for your animarble (especially is he/she has delicate intestines
    like my collies).  A suggestion would be to boil it and then mix with
    rice.  This, BTW, is the veterinarian recommended bland diet for dogs/
    and cats when they have tum problems.  My dogs do double cartwheels for
    this stuff!

    Last summer we found 2 pounds of hamburger in the freezer that you
    could smell was rotten even though it was frozen.  We threw it in
    the trash.  The next day we went out and our 30 pound dog (who
    _never_ raids the trash) had gone through the trash, found and eaten the
    whole thing.  I guess the temptation was too much for her.  To our
    amazement she never got sick.
    	Linda

    I heard somewhere , sometime long ago.......
    
    			If in doubt
    			
    			Throw it out!