1to392831weretaken
New Fish
It's not an issue of internal meat temps here with the contaminated spatula or tongs. If you get raw meat contamination on the spatula and then use that thing to then remove a done burger I don't know if the meat surface temp at the time is enough to kill the bacteria. It seems some analogous to putting the cooked meat back onto a dirty tray.A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking
If you click the above and scroll down quite a bit to the bottom of Appendix A, you get to the equations used to determine pasteurization time for what multiple of bacteria reduction at what meat thickness. Appendix C, is where you'll find the actual government pasteurization tables for various meats. Table C.1 lists the pasteurization time for beef, pork, and lamb as 0 seconds at just 158°F. For chicken, pasteurization time is 0 seconds at 166°F.
So unless your meat is EXTREMELY rare, transmission of bacteria from grill or utensils to cooked meat is impossible, as the cooked meat itself (let alone the environment into which you're shoving said utensil) immediately (zero seconds says the FDA) kills any bacteria that would be transferred.
Again, the lettuce on your burger is WAY WAY more likely to get you sick (unless you heat it up to >160°). So is surfing HH on your phone while taking a shit, and we all do that.
I'm starting to think that grilling is just too dangerous for you guysms, and you should probably just give me your grills. For safety.
The meat surface temp will be the exact same temperature as the grill at the time of meat removal. It would be impossible for it to be otherwise. Internal temps are lower, hence the mention, but surface temp is surface temp = grill temp. Unless you've got your grill turned down to below 160°, your meat will instantly sanitize your utensil. A fraction of a second at 160 does the job. E. Coli dies at 140°. The water coming out of my tap can damned near kill E. Coli.