Safe?

[LongBall]

I put on a butt last night at about 11:30 pm. This morning at 6am the probe had malfunctioned and found the pie stopped cooking.want to say box temp was 40* and meat 60. Think still safe to eat once finished cooking?

 

[SconnieQ]

According to the USDA guidelines, the advice would be that it is not safe to eat. Your meat spent more than 4 hours in the danger zone. That being said, I personally would not have a problem eating it. The USDA is extremely conservative in it's recommendations, and I am a healthy human. Bacteria would not be the problem. Most of the bacteria would multiply on the outside of the meat. And all bacteria will be killed instantly when the meat reaches 165. And in fact, most of them are already dead at 140 or less. It is the toxins that the bacteria produced while in the danger zone that are the problem. The toxins are not affected by cooking. It is thought that vigorous boiling can inactivate many of these toxins in the case of a liquid, but meat will never get to the boiling point. Has there been enough time to create enough toxins to make you sick? I would say for most healthy people, no. You will have to make that decision for yourself though. I'm not trying to convince you to eat it.