"judith lea" > wrote:

> I was in a restaurant in France and I ordered goose which came out
> very, very pink with a healthy halo of blood. I hissed at my husband
> that I really couldn't eat it as I was sure I would end up with
> mixametosis or even die!! He laughed and told me to look around at
> the clientele, all French and obviously all regulars as they were
> waving and greeting each other. They must have been in their 80s and
> older. My husband said that if they ate this fare and they survived to
> a great age, then I should tuck in!

It is quite hard to get reliable facts about the safe temperatures for
cooking. For example, the USDA says that duck and goose must reach an
internal temperature of 165F (74C), and various UK websites I found said
that if not cooked to 70C there was a risk of salmonella.

I think the problem is that there are two variables he not just the
temperature, but also the time the meat is held at that temperature is
important. For simplicity most of the advice is based on the assumption
that the food is heated to a temperature where the bugs are killed almost
instantly, but you can get the same effect by holding it at a lower
temperature for longer.

According to Heston Blumenthal (writing about turkeys, but I think the same
goes for ducks and geese):

> All pathogens (those nasty bugs of which salmonella and campylobacter
> are just two) are killed if you hold the internal temperature of the
> turkey at 60C for a minimum of 12 minutes. You can achieve the same
> effect at a lower temperature, though you'd need to maintain the
> internal temperature for longer. (By the same token, at a higher
> internal temperature, it takes less time.)

Whether that applied also to your French goose breast is of course another
question entirely.