Raw Chicken

Jessica Troxell

 Raw Chicken

            Students getting ready to eat were stunned recently to find the chicken fingers at the dining hall were far from cooked and took their complaints to YikYak.

            One student posted photos of what appeared to be raw chicken on the anonymous social network  on Sept. 9  and others have also complained

            “Since when did the hill give out breathing chicken,” the anonymous poster said

Soon after, other students said they were also served raw chicken..

            The new company managing food services at Stonehill, Bon Appetite, admitted there was a cooking error but the situation was addressed after learning about the problem.

 Eating food that is cooked improperly is very dangerous, especially chicken. Eating Chicken that is cooked improperly can cause a variety of food-borne illnesses. The CDC states that eating raw chicken can cause Campylobacter, Salmonella, or Clostridium perfringens germs which in some cases can require hospitalization.

             The head chef, Jeremy Weaver, said the raw chicken was a result of the fryer oil not being changed. He said the person who cooked the chicken went by the look of the outside of the chicken instead of the internal temperature.

Since the fryer oil needed to be changed, it caused the chicken to brown earlier than normal which made the cook think that the chicken was ready to eat when it was not he said.

Weaver said the day that Bon Appetite became aware of the incident they made a report to the Bon Appetite safety director in California.

Weaver said he also changed the type of chicken tenders that are being offered at Stonehill to a thinner tender to stop an incident like this from happening again.

 

He said in the next coming weeks, he hopes to switch the chicken tenders over to a precooked tender to avoid the hazards of undercooked chicken.

 “ Safety is key and at the end of the day I am in charge of all of the food on campus and that photo was like a gunshot and we do not want to be anything like the former client,”  he said, referring to Sodexo.