left shopping in car

Rossy2692

Smell it, thats what I always go by, bad meat gives off a very distinctive odour.

jcr16

no way with the chicken. as i cook for hubby and our children i'd never risk anything if i could make my children or hubby ill. as for the beef. i'd prob do a sniff test, but might just cook it for the cats'. It been very warm down here on the isle of wight. so on back seat of car ( even tho we have blackout windows) it gets very warm in car with sun bearing down on it.

I also hate to waste anything. but a risk of being poorly and ill, then i'm afraid it would have to go.

abi_csi

To be honest as long as it doesn't smell and wasn't too hot, I'd probably eat it, but I have a very strong stomach and wouldn't recommend it. I just hate waste so would have to find some use for it.

wyebird

nickyhutch wrote: »

If it's not ok for us, is it ok for dogs and cats? I don't give my cats anything I wouldn't eat myself. I'm talking human food, obviously!

Dogs can quite happily scoff their own (not necessarily :eek:) sick and things found at the side of the road, without it upsetting them,
(And people still let them lick their faces )
Cats are more picky, and soon err, get rid of anything dodgy.

bramble1

I'd have smelt it and fed it to the dog if it didn't seem okay. He always gets the food that is left in the fridge a bit too long and he's never been ill from it.

Dogs don't get things like salmonella.

rosalie-lavender

Unless the car was very cool I would bin it.

I wouldn't feed it to an animal either. Our last dog had an emergency admission to the local vets and a two day stay with a £200+ bill. At one point the vet thought she might have to be put down and slept at the surgery to keep an eye on her. After ruling out other things that cause her symptoms the vet said it was a form of gastro enteritis caused by eating something dodgy.

valk_scot

I would bin it. It's not just the bacterial growth you need to worry about...yes, proper cooking will kill these but while they grow they release toxins into the foodstuff and no amount of cooking will remove these. For the sake of the price of a couple of packets of meat, it's just not worth it. And don't feed to to the pets either...that's not fair on them to think that it's more okay for them to risk food poisoning than for you. Pet foods in general are produced to the same or higher hygiene standards as human food, just out of less attractive ingredients.

valk_scot

bramble1 wrote: »

Dogs don't get things like salmonella.

That's not actually true. Healthy fit dogs are resistant to it, yes, but if a dog is very young or elderly or has one of a range of fairly common health problems then their immune system can be affected and they can suffer from salmonella poisoning.

[Deleted User]

How ever did my Mum manage to bring up three kids without the benefit of a fridge or freezer I wonder. I am still here and have eaten all sorts of things.We would strain the bits out of the milk so they didn't float on the top and as for cheese well it often was a bit 'furry' along with jam but the furry bits scraped of or cut off and we just ate it.As long as it didn't actually move on the plate there was no exscuse not to eat it up.During rationing we perhaps wern't as fussy as we are now .My late husband once found an orange floating on the sea just off Gurnard Beach on the Isle of Wight during WW2 as a young boy and took it home to his mum, and she washed it and used it in her baking and he lived to a reasonable old age.:):)

julie777

Do I understand from this thread that microwave cooking is more likely than other methods of cooking to kill any bacteria?

I am always finding meat smells horrid before the use by date. Usually I bin it but on Sunday I couldn't bear to throw out the joint of pork so decided to cook it and then decide. In the end we all enjoyed it and were not ill.
Now I am wondering if the smell test mantra really works?

What do others think?