Food Safety

To reduce the risk of cross-contamination, never store cooked or ready-to-eat food below raw food. In other words, don't place your birthday cake below a package of raw fish. Juices from the raw meats may leak out and contaminate your ready-to-eat, cooked food, or in this case your birthday cake. From top to bottom order this is how your raw meats should be stored in your refrigerator:

top shelf - all cooked and ready-to-eat food then...

1. fish - 145

2. whole cuts of beef - 145

3. pork/ham/bacon/sausage - 145

4. ground beef and ground pork - 155

5. poultry - 165 (always on the bottom shelf)

Why in this order? Because the minimal internal cooking temperature for each meat is different, they should be stored in such a way that the meat on the bottom shelf is the one with the highest internal cooking temperature. In other words because the minimal cooking temperature for poultry is 165, it should never be stored above fish which has a lower internal cooking temperature (145). If some of the juices from the poultry were to contaminate the fish, during the cooking process the fish would never reach a high enough temperature to cook out all the bacteria it was cross contaminated with, therefore increasing the risk of someone getting sick. So please be safe and always store your meats in this order if possible!