Just over two years ago the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety Inspection Service determined it's safe to cook pork to a lower internal temperature than had been previously recommended and reduced the recommended cooking temperature for pork by 15 degrees to 145 degrees with a 15 minute rest.

Ceci Snyder, the vice president domestic marketing with the National Pork Board, notes the main benefit to consumers is that all meats in the United States, lamb, beef, pork and veal are now at 145 degrees and the change is being well accepted.

Ceci Snyder-National Pork Board

The attention has been fantastic.

I would say the chefs were the first to applaud it because many of them were already cooking that way but the attention in the consumer media here and all the food magazines has been really great.

It's interesting.

We knew it would be a hard education, it would take a long time to change behavior.

We have seen slower behavior change honestly than we would really want.
We were hoping to have people cooking lower right away but, in our surveys, where we're landed at now is that we actually talk more about a range of cooking.

145 is the medium rare, up to medium is 160.

What we found in all our research is people are much more open to cooking to a range of temperature.

Not everybody maybe wants it at 145.

In the US we have a large Hispanic population that actually likes it a little bit more done so the benefit to us is that we get to talk about a range of cooking.

Ms Snyder says food service has been very enthusiastic about the change in pork cooking temperatures.

She says chefs have reported product served at the lower temperatures has been well accepted by customers and have been the pork industry's best spokespeople.

For more information on recommended cooking temperatures for pork and pork recipes visit porkbeinspired.com.