Fear of Botulism in my canned muscadine Grape Juice?
keitherize
7 years ago
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Botulsim Fear
Comments (40)Thanks, Linda lou. Let me try to articulate my take on all this, and what we, broadly speaking, know and don't know and the conclusions drawn. Botulism spores are ubiquitous. They need specific conditions to develop the toxin, ie anaerobic, moist conditions with a nutrient source, all above a certain pH. These conditions are widely available in nature, and so the botulism organism continues its existence. Humans and other higher organisms consume the spores via food, inhalation, or in drinking water. They don't get sick because the aerobic, acidic conditions of the stomach and intestines, and aerobic conditions with the lungs, where, and I'm guessing here, they eventually get coughed out or whacked by the immune system. There are very, very few cases of botulism toxin poisoning. Heating it up destroys the toxin as well as most bacterial food borne diseases, which is why people cook food. Home canning can create the anaerobic conditions for the spores to create toxins. Nobody knows or has measured the actual incidence of botulism toxin in home canned products. But we do know that the incidence of people dying from botulism poisoning from home canning is very, very small -and the odds, to use TomNJ's figures above, are somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 million to one. Getting sick would be some what more risky, maybe 1 million to one. Most cases are from restaurants. We don't know how many home canners follow the strict USDA guidelines, and how many don't. And they never tell us just what was going on when the people did get sick - did they follow the guidelines, or the other extreme, were they using some old plastic and not very clean mayo jar with no processing? Moving on here, we should remember that in the US, the Federal Gvt, when making recommendations, setting guidelines, and writing laws uses a higher statistical standard than the rest of the world. Which is why the same product - food, medicine, etc., will have an 18 month expiration date in the US and a 5 year expiration date in Europe. This explains why, to destroy botulism toxin in food, the CDC/USDA recommends boiling suspected food 10 minutes, while the rest of the world goes with five. So, lets say that we have a jar of chicken broth that missed the CDC guidelines by 4 psi. We don't know if the gauge was just stuck in some funny position. We have no idea what the incidence of botulism toxin is in home canned food, but we know it can't be very high or a lot more people would be getting sick. We also know that the guidelines are written to the higher statistical standard. And we also know that boiling the contents for 5 or 10 minutes will destroy the toxin, or there would be a lot more people out there in the world, canning or not, who would be getting sick from this. So I think its at this point we (me an' the CDC) differ. Going on the weight of the known evidence, I conclude that the number of jars of home-canned produce out there that contains botulism toxin is pretty small. CDC seems to conclude that its very high, and not only that, each jar that is contaminated is, essentially, a bioweapon bulging at the seams just waiting to go off. My problem is there is no evidence that this is the case. In fact the overwhelming evidence is that it's the opposite - very, very few people get sick from home canning. So with that division in opinion, above I posted that boiling the chicken in a soup for 20 minutes would be fine. The CDC recommendation, on this presumption of a bioweapon-in-a-jar, tells us not to pour it down the sink because of a risk of skin contact poisoning. The majority of incidences of skin contact poisoning that are documented are addicts shooting up Mexican Black Tar Heroin. There are no documented cases of poisoning by contact with food, and none of with the contents of home canning. Well, I certainly agree with the CDC here: don't shoot up black tar heroin. I have also heard, but not verified, that there are now a few incidences of skin contamination due to 'oopsies' at botox clinics, where they work with purified toxin. So here we are now taking about a risk - skin poisoning from a remotely possibly contaminated jar of home canned food infecting someone by skin contact, which has never happened. Well, ok. Thats the job of the CDC/USDA; removing as much risk as possible, But at this point, it seems to me, to be pushing into the realm of statistical meaninglessness. You'd cut your risk far more just by never eating in a restaurant. The CDC continues to tighten up their recommendations on home canning, removing more and more theoretical risk, thats their job. I'm not surprised that they're working on the possible inhalation of botulin toxin, and I wouldn't be surprised if they soon recommend that home canners wear a gas mask, in addition to double bagging and all that, of food that wasn't processed quite up to their standards. So thats how I view things. I think the complaint is that it seems, sometimes, on the forum that the logic works the other way - Because the CDC recommends the never-open-double=bag-throw-out questionable jars, then that means that all jars of questionable food are bulging bio weapons with each pint capable of wiping out the greater New York Metropolitan area, just waiting for the chance to get on your skin and kill you. And I just don't see any evidence, at all, to support this approach....See MoreMuscadine grapes
Comments (2)You can't use the Roma to squeeze muscadines,they don't work like grapes,clogs up the spiral.You have to cook them out on stove,squeeze them in a clean large pot,cook on stove until juice has good color,squeeze juice out with old fashioned sieve strainer,then through fine strainer to remove pulp.The peelings will retain a lot of juice,so be thorough with squeezing.My dad has a bunch of vines,and we make wine every year,tried the Roma last year,waste of time.The juice can be frozen for at least a year.Good luck....See MoreMy Experiences with muscadines
Comments (5)Hi, I'm a home gardener with five production size muscadine vines. My vines are youngish so I'm still experimenting with things. There are a number of desert recipes for them online. I make muscadine jam with them and then use the jam in savory recipes. I have also downloaded some Asian plum souse recipes and made "muscadine sauce" with them. When processing muscadines there are a few tricks that you might find useful for ext time. If it's a traditional slip skin variety, start by separating the skins from the pulp. Just squeeze the pulp into a bowl and put the skin into a separate container. The best tasting juice is in the skins. That's also where the vitimine and nutrients are. The skin of some varieties are astringent and add a lot of tartness, so some sugar may need to be added. When I make jams I grind up the skins in a blinder and add it to the jam. It makes the jam. There are several muscadine pie recipes out there that mainly use the skins. When extracting juice out of the pulp or skin, think "pasteurizing" you heat them quickly and lightly and then extract the juice. Some will accomplish this using steam rather than through boiling. A little heat does a lot. Some of the newer muscadine varieties are bread to have firm flesh and brittle crunchy skin. The varieties with this characteristic that I know about are Supreme, Lane, Late Fry, Big Red, Darlene, Black Beauty, and Majesty. (Majesty is a new variety which is not available to the public yet, but this one is one is supposed to be an inch in a half in diameter). These types you can pick while slightly green, cut in half and scoop the seeds out and process like plums. Something I plan to try is to simply can them and make whole sweet pickles with them. However, these varieties when picked slightly green (color turned but not soft), are quite crunchy and sweet tart. so I think they will make a very nice sweet relish. But truth be told, the big female varieties such as Supreme and Black Beauty are so good I end up standing next to the vines and eating most of the berries right there. Supreme is so sweet that the berries are good to eat long before it fully ripens. So even though it might produce 50 lbs of fruit, I doubt that fruit will go to waste. But the females are just that, female. You need a self fertile variety to go with it for pollination. Supreme which is the largest and the sweetest of the muscadines has some special care needs that the others don't have. The best source of informatiI on on care is the Ison Nursery web-page and You Tube channels. They grow more muscadines than anyone else in the world and give lots of helpful hints. The commercial muscadines all bloom at the same time. You can extend your harvest by a lot by planting a mixture of early, mid season and late season varieties. Also Late Fry and a few others are long season varieties. It starts ripening berries late (September) and will ripen berries until the end of October. Last year, mine has just a smattering of berries to ripen just before Thanksgiving. God bless....See MoreBotulism Just a Scare?
Comments (17)It wasn't clear to me at first what you were seeking in this thread, legsbig. But it's becoming clearer now. From some of the things you said I thought you were talking about canning or preserving chiles in this thread and talking about fermentation of a mash in the other thread. Now it seems that what you really wanted to know about is the same in both threads and that is fermentation. The difference between the two is that in canning, you aim to prevent growth of any microbes while in fermentation, you deliberately cultivate certain ones. There are several types of fermentation. Some are desireable such as yeast fermentation of grape juice to make wine, bacterial fermentation of wine to make vinegar, bacterial fermentation of milk to make yogurt and bacterial fermentation of cabbage to make sauerkraut. Undesirable types of fermentation are ones which cause decay and spoilage. To make a chile pepper mash, I believe you specifically want a lactic acid fermentation, since that is the type used in all vegetable fermentation that I know of. To achieve that, you need to establish conditions favorable to the growth of that bacteria and conditions which will discourage growth of yeast and unwanted types of bacteria. This is done by adding the correct amount of salt to the mash and adjusting pH to a suitable level if necessary. The article linked below is rigorous and will explain all of this better than I can. Just remember that you are trying to nurture the lactic acid bacteria and discourage all other microbes. I hope you find this useful and are successful in making what you want. Jim Here is a link that might be useful: Bacterial Fermentations...See Morekeitherize
7 years agokeitherize
7 years ago
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