Food Safety is a major concern in emergency food service. It is common to find your food in non-refrigerated settings for hours at a time.  To ensure the safety of your co-workers and yourself, please examine the chart and information below. Remember, MASSH is always able to supply your camp or work area with refrigerated trucks for however long you need. 

Bacteria Growth With Temperature

It can be seen on the graph that at 32° F (0° C) bacteria needs as much as 38 hours to divide in two. That also means that if our piece of meat had a certain amount of bacteria on its surface, after 38 hours of lying in a refrigerator the amount of bacteria will double. If we move this meat from the refrigerator to a room having a temperature of 80° F (26.5° C), the bacteria will divide every hour (12 times faster). At 90° F they will be dividing every 30 minutes. Someone might say: why do I have to bother with all this bacteria stuff, I am going to kill them anyhow. Well, this is not entirely true, as thermophillic bacteria can survive high temperatures and might spoil the food if certain procedures are not observed. Secondly, if we let spoilage bacteria multiply, for example keeping meat at room temperature for too long, they will spoil the food. The food may not exhibit odor or slime yet, but its flavor is already affected. A thermal process will kill them but the fact remains that they have already done some damage.