Contaminated Banquet Pot Pies: The Price of Convenience

Omaha, NEMother was always right, after all. Or maybe it was Granny, who dispensed sage advice about not forgetting your overcoat, minding your manners and never, ever becoming too busy for a wholesome, home-cooked meal. Well somehow, over time life has become way too complicated—ever since the 1960's when the TV dinner made its debut. The food industry has never looked back.

Now frozen, and pre-packaged food is not only a mammoth industry, but also a lifestyle for most. And the genesis of the two-career household along with the advent of the microwave, have combined to create the nuke-it-and-wolf-it-down-while-standing-at-the-counter generation. Granny would be livid at this turn of events. But c'est la vie, that's the way the world has gone and we often have little choice but to go with the flow.

Sometimes, you have little choice but to go to the freezer for the pizza, or the pot pie. You have to eat, and you're on the clock.

And as a consumer, you trust the manufacturer to have pre-cooked, or prepared the food properly. Provided you follow the instructions on the package, all should be well in this hurry-up world we call home.

But it isn't, when people become sick from eating frozen pot pies. Specifically, poisoned by salmonella from eating tainted Banquet pot pies.

The investigation into an outbreak of Salmonella l 4,[5], 12:I:- back in the fall, is ongoing. In total, well over 100 individuals in 35 states were sickened from eating tainted pot pies.

ConAgra, the food processing giant behind the Banquet name, announced changes to cooking instructions in mid-December. Among the changes is a recommendation not to cook the products at all in a microwave that is below a certain wattage threshold.

That puts the onus on the consumer to know the wattage of their microwave. And it assumes that the consumer is not working from an apparent, misguided notion that microwavable foods are pre-cooked, and they just need to be speed-defrosted, and heated up.

There is also the assumption that consumers have the time to read the fine print, check their microwave for the proper rating before choosing to 'cook' the pot pie. And yes it needs to be cooked. No, it just doesn't need to be warmed up. That's not good enough. Because, you see, while many of the ingredients in the pot pie are, indeed pre-cooked, many others such as some vegetables and the flour used to fashion the shell for the pie, is not. And uncooked flour can harbor salmonella.

The new instructions should generate conditions that, in Banquet's view, should bring the inside temperature of the pot pie up to 165 degrees, which is the point at which bacteria cannot survive. To make that happen in a microwave, you have to heat it from four to six minutes in a microwave that carries at least 1100 watts of power. Banquet is now saying that you shouldn't cook the pot pie at all, in a microwave that carries a lower wattage.

In hindsight, forgive anyone who may be confused by all of this, especially anyone who may have an older Banquet pot pie in the freezer with the sticker that says, "Ready in 4 Minutes: Microwaveable." Those stickers are no longer being used, and apparently were added last year for marketing reasons without due process, according to a ConAgra spokesperson in a previously published report.

One could forgive the busy parent, or time-compressed professional, or madly-texting teen as they follow the suggestion on the large-print sticker at the front to pop it in for four minutes, without taking, or having the time to read the fine print elsewhere on the package that suggests it might be in need of cooking longer.

And one could forgive the harried mom for not knowing where the meat thermometer is, or the disheveled son for not knowing what a meat thermometer even is. A meat thermometer, by the way, is what Banquet is now suggesting we use to verify that the contents of the pot pie has been heated to 165 degrees and, therefore, successfully cooked.

Our kids aren't the fast food generation; it is we—those of us who grew up in the late 1960's and early 1970's with the Golden Arches, and Swanson TV dinners before that.
This stuff has been around for a generation now.

So why is all this contamination happening?

ConAgra, and its Banquet brand is not the only manufacturer that has had problems: 2007 turned out to be a banner year for food recalls by a host of different manufacturers. Still, ConAgra has had its share over the years.

In October, it was contaminated pot pies. Earlier this year it was Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter that sickened 628 people in 27 states. In December 2005, three million pounds of ready-to-eat lunches that had the potential to be packed off to school with three million unsuspecting youngsters were recalled out of possible concerns for listeria contamination.

And in 2002, ConAgra recalled 18.6 million pounds of fresh and frozen beef products after an E. coli outbreak.

Whatever the source of the alleged contamination, it may take more than a meat thermometer to fix.