Lunch meat safety

[marmalady]

Pasta - Define 'safe'----------

A) Do you want to get sick from food poisoning, barf a few days, maybe need some antibiotics?

B) Do you want to find out 10-20-30 years down the road that all those wonderful preservatives/hormones/antibiotics fed to the lil' turkeys are eating your liver?

It's a no-brainer for me!

[Pastachef]

What I worry about is keeping it too long or throwing it away too soon. But now that you've posted it, I now know why they so often turn away from the prepackaged kind. They must be learning this in school. I haven't read it anywhere. I've only read about nitrates in hot dogs and bacon - which they're asking for. I would say that it is my job to make sure they don't get food poisoning.

[marmalady]

Pasta - just reread your first post re the question - why are you cutting it up on Wednesday or Thursday for the weekend? Scheduling/time constraints? If I sliced fresh turkey on Wednesday, I couldn't guarantee how it would be by Sunday. But if you could cut it on Friday, with proper fridge and packaging, it should be fine through the weekend. That way, you could use preservative free turkey, and the girls won't throw it away because it's 'slimy' -eeeuuuuw! (is that the sound the girls make? )

[Pastachef]

This new group would eat it no matter. The reason I cut it up on wednesday is that on Mondays, I have to do the food for 130 people, clean the kitchen and dining room and equipment from the weekend, set the tables, etc. On tuesdays I have the huge food order to put away. I don't get time to cut it up until wednesday. It seems that all of the cooks there do it this way. Because I have always heard it is good for five days, I've always gone by that. My boss doesn't trust turkey unless it has just been cut up that day. A visiting chef told me that it was good for up to TEN days. I can't believe that,and yet the housekeeper argues with me that it is good longer than five days. From monday until wednesday I use prepackaged turkey. But I've had so many opinions that I'm getting more confused. Even the maintenance man teases me about my common sense attitude about germs in my kitchen. This guy would, (and has) gone outside and jumped up and down in the dumpsters to make more room for trash, and then come into the kitchen to put his hands inside the ice machine without washing them. That's why I'm asking the pros here about the turkey. One day I came in to find the salad bar unplugged and the food at room temperature, including the turkey breast that I sliced the afternoon before. God knows how long it had been this way. The housekeeper fussed because I threw it out! Not that it's any of HER business. So I'm looking for Some kind of safety gauge, since you can't smell or taste food poisoning.