Meat labeling leaves questions about cooking

If you plan to ham it up on Easter, get ready for a taste of possible cooking confusion.

Perennially popular for the spring holiday, ham is easy to prepare and welcome at the table. The confusion comes in figuring out whether your ham requires cooking or can be eaten straight from the package, since the labels sometimes leave you in the dark.

The same holds true for other processed meats: hot dogs, summer sausage, balogna, salami and more.

We asked food-safety experts to clear up some of the questions. Their recommendations didn't entirely agree and they had to admit consumers have good call to be confused.

Here's some of what you might find yourself pondering about ham and other processed meats as you peruse their labels:

-- If the label says "fully cooked," do you still need to cook or heat the meat at home?

-- If it doesn't say "fully cooked," but offers no cooking instructions - the case with some hams - should you assume it's not cooked and cook it yourself?

-- Does "fully cooked" mean the same as "ready to eat?"

-- Does "heat" mean the same as "cook" in label instructions for home preparation?

-- If the meat is pre-sliced, can you assume it's ready to eat, even if it doesn't say so?

Food scares over the past decade involving such pathogens as listeria, salmonella and E. coli 0157:H7 have more consumers asking questions and manufacturers and government health officials sometimes tiptoeing around the answers.

Robert Post, director of labeling and additives for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, says officials will review labeling terms for processed meats and other products later this year, and some changes aimed at greater clarity could result.

Meanwhile, consumers still need to make cooking decisions. Although the government requires meat labels to include safe-handling instructions, such as refrigerating the product and avoiding cross-contamination, rules do not require cooking instructions or the words "fully cooked," even if the product is.

The ham you buy may or may not have been cooked, Post said. If not cooked, the label should say either "uncured" or "fresh" ham, in which case you'll need to cook it at home, bringing the meat to an internal temperature of 160 degrees.

If the ham was cooked in processing, the label may or may not say so. What should you do?

"I would say in the absence of a term like "cooked" or "boiled," the consumer should be wary and assume (home) cooking is needed," said Post.

If the label says "fully cooked," however, Post says the ham should be safe to eat without added cooking - even though most people prefer to serve ham hot when it's the main course and sometimes fancy it up with special glazes or other attractions.

Advice ranged from highly cautious to more relaxed when the government and industry food-safety experts we consulted discussed whether to cook other processed meats.

All recommended cooking hot dogs - that is, placing them in water and bringing the water to a full boil - even though hot dogs are always cooked in processing, whether or not the label says so. Listeria found in hot dogs was the cause of a recent product recall.

As for the meaning of the word "heat," as in "heat and serve," there seems to be no official definition. In the case of hot dogs, experts say "heat" should mean bring to a boil.

Other processed meats such as summer sausage, thuringer, salami, pepperoni and balogna are manufactured in a variety of ways that discourage the growth of bacteria. Some of these: smoking, dry processing, fermenting, high acidity from seasoning, high salt content and use of nitrates.

The words "ready to eat" on the label might not mean exactly the same as "fully cooked," but they do mean the product was processed in such a way that it shouldn't need to be cooked at home, says Jan Busboom, meat specialist with Washington State University. Ready to eat pre-sliced products should be considered safe to eat straight from the package, he said.

There are no absolute guarantees, however, that such meats are free of harmful bacteria. An E. coli outbreak a couple of years ago was linked to dry-processed Italian salami not intended to be cooked. Since then, the USDA has required new testing procedures to insure greater safety of such products.

The safety of these meats depends partly on how you handle them at home: keeping them refrigerated, for example, and away from contact with raw meats or with knives, cutting boards or other utensils that raw meats have touched.

Interestingly, the most cautious advice we heard about whether to cook processed meats came from a manufacturing executive and was related to those cross-contamination concerns.

"We recommend to people that they heat (cook) everything because we don't know how it's been handled after it leaves here," he said, even though he considers most of the products safe to eat without cooking after they're first processed and packaged.

By heating, he primarily means frying processed-meat slices until they're cooked through, except for boiling hot dogs and baking ham. Processed meats might also be cooked in casseroles and other dishes.

He recommended calling a product's manufacturer with any cooking questions if the package gives a telephone number.

Another source of information: The USDA's Meat and Poultry Hotline, 800-535-4555.