A chef is sentenced after his pie killed one person and sickened 31 others

Originally published at: A chef is sentenced after his pie killed one person and sickened 31 others | Boing Boing

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No actual jail time - Suspended sentence for 12 months and some fairly large fines.

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Having left it, he cooked it again and added warm mashed potato.

And didn’t put the whole thing in the oven to bake? Definitely cutting corners.

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My first reading was something along the lines of ‘how does one screw up shepherds pie?’. Yeesh.

He may be a better chef, but who will hire him? Not a restaurant I’d be interested in going to.

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Man, I love shepherds pie. Really scary you can screw it up that bad to kill someone.

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Shepherd’s pie is so damn good that this article about ill-cooked poisonous shepherd’s pie STILL made me hungry for some :yum:

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Croucher cut a few corners, which led to food poisoning.

I think we all learned something today.

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That’s what I was wondering? Even if you poorly handled the thawing on the meat, a bake should eliminate any issues. In addition to his food safety bound spots, I’d say he’s a bad chef for presenting barely-cooked mincemeat and warm mashed potatoes as “Shepherd’s Pie”.

Yeah. Round pies only!

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I mean, in a home kitchen, in a non-catering setting you pretty much can’t. These were very specific circumstances. I think you can continue to enjoy it.

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Maybe. Some are heat-stable.

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There was a scene I liked from Cold Mountain:

[Georgia appears with a small, frozen deer]

[Georgia ]: What d’you reckon? Think we could eat this?

[Stobrod ]: You cook something long enough you can eat anything.

Pangle: It’s frozen. How long it been there for?

[Stobrod ]: You hungry?

Pangle: Yeah.

[Stobrod ]: Not very long.

[next scene is Georgia up in the middle of the night, retching.]

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This was in County Midsomer, presumably.

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Well, he said it was “a shame” that these circumstances made him a better chef, so I’m sure everything is fine!

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I just made some yesterday, for home. Love the stuff. Reading between the lines, I think what happened here is the cooked meat didn’t stay in the ice bath long enough to reduce the temperature to safe levels. The point of the ice bath is to get it down to under 38 degF quickly as just putting it into the cooler will result in a longer cooling profile and potentially this outcome. As I think someone pointed out, baking to appropriate temperatures won’t resolve any issues. E-coli is an example of this; the toxin it produces will survive the heat even if the organism doesn’t

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I think that has been my confusion in the past about food borne illness. I always thought you had to get infected by a live organism and didn’t realize that you really can get “food poisoning” rather than a direct infection from bacteria, and it can affect you immediately rather than after some incubation period needed for an infection to set in.

I have no idea why didn’t make the connection with the kind of toxicity created by botulism with the same kind of issue being possible from other food borne infections.

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This is alot

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while the three people unaffected were vegetarians who didn’t eat the pie.

What a sad set of circumstances.

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But the judge raised concerns about the pub’s record, saying: “The Crewe Arms is an important pub to the local community. I have read many references from members of the community. They have all said that this was a one-off mistake but looking at the evidence this was not a one-off mistake.

“The pub should have been taking steps to be improving. Inspections in 2015 gave it three stars and in 2017 gave it only a one star.”

I’m surprised there isn’t any mention of the pub and/or hotel being punished for this. It’s also their responsibility, whether they pushed him or not.

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