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That is crazy! I never thought the microwave was actually, really & for true, cooking my frozen dinner. Now I have to rethink my whole laziest-person-in-the-universe all Lean Cuisine weight loss plan. Although, week long salmonella induced explosive diarrhea could leave me Victoria Beckham thin. Hmmmm...

First of all, I don't like the implication that anyone eating a frozen dinner deserves what they get. I don't eat them now, but lots of people do.

The issue here is, once again, food companies refusing to take responsibility for serving consumers a toxic product, and instead, trying to shift responsibility for food safety squarely onto the shoulders of consumers, rather than making every effort to ensure their processing methods produce a safe food product.

Remember the e.coli outbreak? The media's focus was on how consumers need to change their cooking habits to avoid being affected by the contaminant in their meat, NOT how the meatpacking industry needs to change their practices in order to avoid contaminating our food in the first place. Of course people should practice safe food preparation, but we should hold food companies responsible for providing non-toxic products for our money.

ConAgra should have the option of either providing uncontaminated food, or applying this warning label to all their products: "May contain salmonella that could cause violent stomach illness if cooked inadequately - please note that the cooking instructions on this package will vary with microwave wattage, and even the cook time prescribed may not be enough, and illness could result. Do not feed to young children under any circumstances."

Do you think this honesty would affect their sales? Since they're claiming that poor microwaving habits are to blame for these 165 illnesses, surely they'd be fine with this warning label...!

It could be true that in a perfect world, "no one should be feeding a child that crap". But this is not a perfect world. This is a world where mothers and fathers often work ten to twelve hour days with added commuting time to and from work, whether that work is a profession or a trade - and some of them - many in fact - at jobs that do not provide enough money for nannies or housekeepers. Sometimes there are no grandparents around or willing or able to do what many grandparents do today - take care of their children's children.

If everyone thought that "no one should be feeding a child that crap" and action were taken to not do so, then someone would have to find a way to replace these inexpensive and quick ways of feeding children, both at home and at schools and daycare. Taxes would increase due to higher labor and food costs in school cafeterias (and higher taxes for schools is something that generally the child-free do not support in many communities as it "has nothing to do with them"). Daycare costs would rise due to having to put time and care and fresh ingredients into the day's planning, rather than a wink and a nod and a pop into the microwave of an industrial frozen TV dinner or chicken pot pie. What happens when daycare costs rise? Who will replace that care for the children if it becomes too economically unfeasible for a family? The mother or father doing the baby-track thing, which of course until one does it one can not believe how it can affect future "career potential". Back to the kitchen we go!

These foods are a huge boon to many people. They simply need to be made safer, as safe as is possible. Nothing, of course, is completely safe in life.

Not even fresh spinach sometimes.

I think Karen makes a good point. Yes in a perfect world we should feed our children fresh organic, responsibly grown and raised food to our children. But it's not a perfect world, parents lead hectic, stressful lives, and sometimes they're going to end up using some kind of convenience food.
Therefore it's up to the manufacturers acting in concert with the government regulation agencies to make sure processed food is made as safely as possible.

The weirdest thing about this is, most frozen dinners are packaged with cooked ingredients that are then flash frozen to be microwaved to the temperature one enjoys. I have not had a frozen meal in a while, but I used to eat them as a kid, and don't ever remember worrying about meat not being cooked yet. This is like having a raw hot dog - very strange. So, if the meat was pre-cooked, as I am assuming it was, how the hell did salmonella get in there? Obviously, there is more going on here than ConAgra is letting on. Somehow, bacteria-laden raw meat slipped through the cracks, and they are now blaming the consumer for not killing that bacteria.

The terrible thing is, I am not surprised at all. And, I wouldn't assume that vegetarian meals are free of this problem. To me, the issue is that the FDA basically allows the most disgusting crap to be packaged as long as it will be "zapped" somewhere along the line - pasteurization or some other form of cooking. So, if something goes wrong in the "zapping" process, the contaminated food will be passed on to the consumer. I think we should expect food that is free of bacteria and other contaminates that doesn't need to be zapped to be safe. I know it would be more expensive, but isn't it worth it? I am sure it would be less expensive that infant diarrhea for 6 weeks.