Pregnant women are at high risk for getting sick from Listeria, harmful bacteria found in many foods. Listeria can lead to disease called Listeriosis. Listeriosis can cause miscarriage, premature delivery, serious sickness, or death of a newborn baby. If you are pregnant, you need to know what foods are safe to eat.
What can I do to keep my food safe?
• Listeria can grow in the refrigerator. The refrigerator should be 40 F or lower and the freezer 0 F or lower. Use a refrigerator thermometer to check your refrigerator’s inside temperature.
• Clean up all spills in your refrigerator right way-especially juices from hot dog packages or raw meat or chicken/turkey.
• Clean the inside walls and shelves of your refrigerator with hot water and liquid soap then rinse.
• Use precooked or ready to eat food as soon as you can. Don’t store it in the refrigerator too long.
• Wash your hands after you touch hot dogs, raw meat, chicken, turkey, or seafood or their juices.
Fight Bacteria
1. CLEAN: Wash hands often with soap and warm water. Use clean dishes, spoons, knives and forks. Wash countertops with hot soapy water and clean up spills right away.
2. SEPARATE: Keep raw meat, fish, and poultry away from other food that will not be cooked.
3. COOK: Cook food to a safe internal temperature. Check with a food thermometer. Ground beef 160 F; Whole turkey 180 F; Pork 160 F.
4. CHILL: Refrigerate or freeze within 2 hours-refrigerate or freeze within 1 hour in hot weather (above 90 F). Don’t leave meat, fish, poultry, or cooked food sitting out.
What can I do to keep my baby and myself from listeriosis?
• Do not eat hot dogs, luncheon meats, bologna, or other deli meats unless they are reheated until steaming hot.
• Do not eat refrigerated pate, meat spread from a meat counter or smoked seafood found in the refrigerated section of the store. Foods that don’t need refrigeration, like canned tuna and calmed salmon, are okay to eat. Refrigerate after opening.
• Do not drink raw (unpasteurized) milk and do not eat foods that have unpasteurized milk in them.
• Do not eat salads made in the store such as ham salad, chicken salad, egg salad, tuna salad, or seafood salad.
• Do not eat soft cheese such as Feta, queso blanco, queso fresco, Brie, Camembert cheeses, blue-veined cheeses, and Panela unless it is labeled as made with pasteurized milk. Make sure the label says, “MADE WITH PASTEURIZED MILK”
For more information about food safety:
U.S. Department ofAgriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service
www.fsis.usda.gov/
USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline
1-888-MPHotline (toll-free nationwide) or 1-888-674-6854
TTY: 1-800-256-7072
