> I'm not sure how your analogy with chicken is supposed to work. If you cooked chicken, submerged it in oil, and then incubated at room temperature for a few days, then I definitely wouldn't eat that either. The problem isn't the initial population of C. botulinum; it's that they multiply under the anaerobic conditions of the oil.
Let me spell out the analogy: The problem with chicken isn't long-term presence of a bacteria colony (botulism), it's presence of salmonella. Salmonella doesn't need days to become a problem - it's a problem immediately. Chicken when raw is a great environment for salmonella. Chicken when cooked is a great environment for salmonella - in fact, there are numerous food safety incidents that occur when people use the same utensils on raw and cooked chicken, transferring the bacteria. Hence, the only reason it is safe to eat the cooked chicken is because you kill (enough of) the salmonella during the cooking process.
Conversely, he document you cited makes the claim that raw garlic is a great environment for botulism, and so is roasted garlic, and does not address whether the cooking process kills the bacteria. In fact, it makes the claim by implication that there is no roasting process that kills the bacteria. As far as I can tell, these claims are made without any actual experiment, and it is simply enough that the environments before and after processing are good for harboring the bug.
> As far as I can tell, these claims are made without any actual experiment, and it is simply enough that the environments before and after processing are good for harboring the bug.
Correct--processes are unsafe until proven safe. Would you stand under a bridge designed by an engineer who believed otherwise?
And the effort to prove that a process step actually kills all pathogens (including those that survive at temperatures well above 100 C) across all possible input material is big. So the return on that investment usually isn't there, especially when the safe alternative is trivial--heat gently to infuse, then refrigerate, or acidify or pressure-can for a commercial product.
The principles that you're rejecting are the reason why Americans now rarely suffer from foodborne illnesses that used to be a routine, unpleasant, and occasionally lethal part of life (and still are in many developing countries). As with many public health measures, they seem to be victims of their own success, delivering extraordinary improvements in safety that then deliver public complacency.
Let me spell out the analogy: The problem with chicken isn't long-term presence of a bacteria colony (botulism), it's presence of salmonella. Salmonella doesn't need days to become a problem - it's a problem immediately. Chicken when raw is a great environment for salmonella. Chicken when cooked is a great environment for salmonella - in fact, there are numerous food safety incidents that occur when people use the same utensils on raw and cooked chicken, transferring the bacteria. Hence, the only reason it is safe to eat the cooked chicken is because you kill (enough of) the salmonella during the cooking process.
Conversely, he document you cited makes the claim that raw garlic is a great environment for botulism, and so is roasted garlic, and does not address whether the cooking process kills the bacteria. In fact, it makes the claim by implication that there is no roasting process that kills the bacteria. As far as I can tell, these claims are made without any actual experiment, and it is simply enough that the environments before and after processing are good for harboring the bug.