Lamb shanks, expiry 10th january

Hey guys,

I need some help please!

Bought lamb shanks that were on clearance, in the first week of January. Use by was 10th January. Vac sealed. Today I finally went to cook them. I am roasting at 200c, then I will put them in the pressure cooker for a 3 or 4 hours. Then I will portion them and put them into the freezer, spread amongst other containers of different meals, to bring their temp down faster.

One packet had green, inside a bit, on the meat, and alot around the boundaries of the meat. I threw that one out, but the other 4 packets I washed and then put in the roasting pan. Little bit of smell when I opened the packets, after washing and airing, smell was not to strong. A little bit of funny smell.

Are they OK? Will I be OK when I eat it? What is on the meat that can survive? Etc Etc.

I found the following post on quora;

This is an interesting question. Virus and parasites would not survive extended heating. So we are left with bacteria. Toxins are indeed produced by several bacterial species. C. botulinum produces a toxin that is probably the most lethal substance known thus far. The spore formed by C. botulinum resists 100'C for almost 6 hours, BUT the toxin itself is actually denatured relatively quickly at 100'C. So even if C.bot had grown in the meat, the extended heating time would render the toxin harmless.

Another Clostridium (C. perfringens) may resist the heat in a spore state, survive the cooking, and then would need 8-10 hrs. in the warm meat to return to a vegetative state and multiply to around 10^7 per ml. You would then eat this living culture, and the organism will start to sporulate again, this time producing an enterotoxin in your gut about 7-12 hrs. after eating. This causes the diarrheal illness.

Not so with the toxin of Staphylococcus aureus. If allowed to multiply and produce its toxin, the organism itself is easily destroyed by heating (it's not a spore-former) but the toxin is remarkably resistant to heat, and can be expected to remain. It is, however, unlikely to have grown initially in the midst of all that spoilage going on, as the competitive exclusion from the putrefactive bacteria would be very strong.

Some other spore formers might survive the heating, such as Bacillus cereus, but again would need extended time at favourable temperature to multiply and produce its toxin after the heating was finished.

Other 'vegetative' (non-spore-forming) organisms such as Salmonellae, E. coli, Yersinia, Listeria, Klebsiella, Shigella, Campylobacter, Vibrio, and Streptococci, would be destroyed during the heating.

In summary, the strong putrescent odour and taste of the decaying meat would survive the heating, and would probably prevent anyone from wanting to eat the meat. Putrefactive (spoilage) bacteria break everything down into acids, gases, amino acids, and sulfur compounds, and some of these are objectionable, but not necessarily dangerous once the meat has been REALLY well heated. Botulism is prevented, as are almost all infections. There is an outside chance that something like a Staphylococcal thermoduric toxin may have survived, and should this horrible mess be left around to languish at warm temperatures, some of the other spore-formers may start to wreak their havoc again.

Some hunting cultures have hung their meat for weeks until putrefactive processes are well under way, and the surface even has maggots crawling over it. This gives the preferred "gamey" taste, and the meat by this time is very tender. But with thorough cooking (no "medium rare" here!!), there are usually not many complaints of illness!

Contrast this with the custom in the highlands of Papua New Guinea of cooking a whole pig carcass enclosed in the hot fire pit for several days..... Sometimes when the heat is not sufficient, or the time is over extended, we see "pig-bel" with acute necrotizing enteritis, with a very high fatality rate (It's another C. perfringens, type C, beta toxin)

Thanks alot for any info you can provide!