People impacted by power cuts since Storm Éowyn hit last Friday have been warned that perishable food in their fridges will almost certainly not be fit for consumption, while frozen food will also have to be binned if it has mostly defrosted.
The director of food safety at Safefood, Trish Twohig, said the guiding principle for people who have suffered long power outages should be: “If in doubt, throw it out.”
She said perishable food in fridges could start to spoil after spending a couple of hours above five degrees Celsius.
When such food climbs above that temperature for any length of time, bacteria can begin to multiply, with its presence often undetectable to the human eye – or nose.
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Ms Twohig said cold meats, cheese, cut fruit and vegetables and leftovers are particularly vulnerable.
When it comes to frozen food, people have more time, Ms Twohig said, and depending on the quality of the freezers and whether or not doors were kept shut at all times, some products might be okay to eat even four days after a power outage.
She stressed that as soon as power returns, food stored in freezers should be assessed.
“Don’t wait for a week to check. Do it pretty much straight away,” she told The Irish Times. “Food such as ice cream won’t make or if seafood has signs of defrosting it should be discarded,” she said.
“The good news is everything isn’t necessarily lost because joints of raw meat or poultry that still have ice crystals should be okay to be refrozen.”
She warned, however, that once perishable food in a freezer reaches “higher temperatures for a period of time, the bacteria will have chance to multiply and freezing the food generally will not kill that bacteria. Freezing it acts like a pause button and you could end up getting food poisoning as a result of food from the freezer or fridge being at elevated temperatures.”
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