Looking around the web tonight, I found an interesting, if not distressing story about boy scouts getting food poisoning from EColi at a scout camp at the end of July. We had kids throwing up at camp too, but it’s because they could buy a pint of Blue Bell ice cream cheaper than they could buy water.
This story comes to us from the August 3rd edition of eFoodAlert.com. I couldn’t resist this bit though…
According to the Washington Post article, campers are enjoying their experience in spite of the outbreak – “…working on merit badges, learning celestial navigation on night hikes, motorboating and shooting rifles.”
Perhaps a new merit badge – Principles of Food Safety – should be added to the Boy Scouts’ syllabus.
As if camping in July for a week wouldn’t be tough enough, those poor folks had much worse things to deal with. I just hope they’re all feeling better now.
I would actually suggest food safety be part of normal advancement. Working at a summer camp, that did patrol cooking, for four years I’m amazed we don’t have more sick kids. I think the only think going for us is teenagers tend to have super strong guts that can handle almost anything.
I’m a little up tight about food safety since I’ve gone through a bunch of classes and have my Restaurant Manager Certification, but there are some things that everyone should be taught:
– Checking internal temperature of cooked food. Burnt to a crisp, raw in the middle burger anyone?
– Keeping raw meat/poultry separated from ready to eat foods. Chicken on the top of the cooler dripping its juices on the bag of baby carrots or cans of soda on the bottom?
– Proper sanitation after dealing with potentially dangerous raw foods. Just rinsing out the bowl used to mix up the meatloaf and using it to serve the salad.
You are responding with exactly what I was thinking. However, unless a troop packs in its own food, you can’t control what is served in the mess hall outside of using your senses (including common). At our last long term camp, they brought breakfast to us which needed to be cooked by us so that could be monitored. However, lunch was generally sandwich type items that were also brought to our campsite. Dinner was at the mess hall.
Ultimately, it can be tricky. As their leaders, we need to train them to take ownership of their safety and play an active role being fully aware of what they put in their mouths. I’m with you though, I’d much prefer having the food within the control of the scouts where they can be sure it is prepared and cooked properly.