McDonald’s to investigate safe alternative to FSA guidelines for cooking burgers

Fast food chain McDonald’s has welcomed the decision by a Food Standards Agency (FSA) expert panel to consider lower time/temperature options to its recommendation that burgers and minced beef products should continue to be cooked at 70°C for two minutes, provided they were demonstrated to be safe.

Speaking to Food Manufacture at a food safety conference organised by CIES - the Food Business Forum in Munich last month, Dr Bizhan Pourkomailian, senior food safety manager Europe for McDonald’s Restaurants, said he welcomed the review by the FSA’s Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF), which was conducted at the company’s request.

Pourkomailian said the ACMSF’s ruling that it would consider lower time/temperature combinations where risk assessments proved it to be safe “is good for us”. “It has opened it up for us to investigate,” he added.

McDonald’s has adapted the ISO 22000 international food safety management standard to meet its particular needs, said Pourkomailian. “It’s a food safety management system that builds on hazard analysis critical control points,” he said. “It is logical. We found it is the best system which enables us to continuously improve.” Pourkomailian added: “The key to food safety is training.”

At a meeting​ last year the ACMSF agreed to maintain existing cooking advice to ensure that any E.coli O157 contamination in raw meat was neutralised. However, it stated: “Use of lower time/temperature combinations could be considered where producers demonstrate through a risk assessment approach that the final product is safe, and that the process is under effective control.”