Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

Speak Up

HALIFAX - Once in the freezer, twice on the fire.

Those are the new recommendations from a federal-provincial-territorial donair working group that spent two years studying food-safety issues when it comes to preparing the spiced meaty snack.

Nova Scotia will adopt regulations requiring donair outlets to cook their meat again after slicing it from the large cones heating on a spit. At the end of the night, the cones will also have to be sliced up and frozen once for use in items such as donair pizza.

"We've been doing it that way all along so I don't know what's changed about it," said Dave Baddour, manager of Tony's Donair & Pizza, which has been in business in Halifax more than 30 years.

"They just want to put it on paper, I guess."

In 2004, undercooked donair meat led to 43 confirmed cases of E. coli in Calgary. Eight people were hospitalized and two cases of kidney failure occurred.

There have been a total of about 100 confirmed or suspected cases of food-borne illness related to donairs in this country. None was in Nova Scotia, but this province - long a hotbed of donair consumption - played a major role in the study with more input from producers than anywhere else in Canada.

"We're purebreds out of Nova Scotia that do donairs," said Wayne Misener, manager of a King of Donair outlet in Halifax.

"They're Heinz 57 from the West Coast ... They don't know how to do the product. They're trying to copycat ... They don't know how to control their meat out there."

The report also recommends meats purchased to make donairs come from inspected and approved sources, said Mike Horwich, director of food protection with the province's Agriculture Department.