I was talking with Paul Reilly a UK Meatcuttersclub member yesterday, and the subject of wooden meat blocks came up. Paul Reilly says quote me , we use wood blocks all the time in UK, and our laws are very strict, about 20-25 years ago here in the UK they banned wooden blocks, due to hygiene regulations , and brought in poly tops, within about a year, they brought back the wooden blocks or tops, reason being , butchers kicked off saying poly tops were more unhygienic and very hard to clean where the cuts in the poly were, and it was proved wooden blocks had a natural sap in it that helped kill bacteria, here we use a block brush and saw dust or salt to clean the block...no water.
So maybe America USDA will wake up to this also, I have said many years ago we never made people sick or killed people off wooden blocks, And we cross cut on them, beef, pork and chicken. we started that when they change us to the poly tops.
while this isn't the blocks I start on I do like them lol
I am not aware of any effective ways to get the stains out of Poly boards with out using BLEACH. I am really uncomfortable with putting bleach on something that is used for preparing food. I used an old school wood block for years. I never had problems with stains. Just soap and water to clean it.
I always preferred wooden blocks as easier on the edge, and safer because they are less slippery. That said I still feel bleach is required, after scraping with a block brush and salt, on a wood block. For the poly tops we would use a germicidal detergent, then a sanitizer rinse, at least 4 times/day. When we actually had several hours downtime we would finish the polytops with bleach and let it evaporate dry. For both wood and poly, bleach evaporates very quickly so there is no negative effect to using bleach if you have a few hours for it to evaporate.
apcowboy wrote:
I was talking with Paul Reilly a UK Meatcuttersclub member yesterday, and the subject of wooden meat blocks came up. Paul Reilly says quote me , we use wood blocks all the time in UK, and our laws are very strict, about 20-25 years ago here in the UK they banned wooden blocks, due to hygiene regulations , and brought in poly tops, within about a year, they brought back the wooden blocks or tops, reason being , butchers kicked off saying poly tops were more unhygienic and very hard to clean where the cuts in the poly were, and it was proved wooden blocks had a natural sap in it that helped kill bacteria, here we use a block brush and saw dust or salt to clean the block...no water.
So maybe America USDA will wake up to this also, I have said many years ago we never made people sick or killed people off wooden blocks, And we cross cut on them, beef, pork and chicken. we started that when they change us to the poly tops.
while this isn't the blocks I start on I do like them lol
