U.S. Policy on Turkey Is Just a Toll-Free Call Away

Of all the people who have to work today, the ladies answering the government’s meat and poultry hotline are performing among the most critical of emergency services.

Last Thanksgiving, a woman called in a panic about a turkey she had defrosted overnight in the toilet. She had flushed about every half-hour to keep the water fresh, but was it OK to cook? she asked.

“She got the part about changing the cold water every 30 minutes; she just didn’t understand enough about bacteria,” said Diane VanLonkhuyzen, a hotline team leader.

Then there was the woman who left her turkey to defrost in the attic, where the cat got hold of it and batted it around the rafters like a football. Ceci Williamson, another hotline specialist, received this call last Thanksgiving morning.

“They were worried because the turkey was covered in fiberglass,” Williamson said. “I suggested they throw it away.”

In this vast land of pork, the hotline is one of the few places where federal bureaucrats talk turkey directly to taxpayers. Even on Thanksgiving Day.

More than 130,000 calls pour into the hotline every year. November is the absolute busiest month, and Thanksgiving, when calls are taken from 5 to 11 a.m. PST, is a day of abject insanity.

This week, Williamson and VanLonkhuyzen and the eight other government “moms,” as they are sometimes called, each have taken 50 to 60 calls a day about how to thaw, stuff, cook and travel with a turkey safely. Travel is a particular concern.

One woman from New York, whose Thanksgiving dinner was being cooked by her vegetarian daughter-in-law down South, decided to take her own kosher turkeys--two of them--in a corrugated box, which she checked with the airline. The woman and her suitcases made the connection in Atlanta, but her turkeys did not. They arrived the next day.

“I had this vision of the turkeys going around and around on the baggage carousel,” said Williamson, giggling.

Most calls are more mundane. They come from around the nation and from a generation that feels comfortable enough to confess its own lameness because it doesn’t understand the simplest elements of cooking and worries about food-borne illnesses.

And all the gourmet and specialized cookbooks sold every year often forget the basics. (You must refrigerate a pumpkin pie but not an apple one; stuffing should be the last thing in the turkey before roasting and the first out; the best way to determine if a turkey is cooked is to stick a thermometer in a leg muscle and make sure the temperature rises to 180 degrees.)

Started in 1985, the hotline was developed because so many consumers were concerned about safe food handling and didn’t know where to turn. The Agriculture Department established the 800 number, and the calls came flooding in. In the beginning, there was one woman working one phone from a small office deep in the bowels of the two-block-long South Agriculture building on Independence Avenue.

Now eight part-timers and two full-timers sit in a series of connecting cubicles in front of computers wearing headsets and answering calls back-to-back on multi-line phones.

“At first the callers were people who couldn’t even pronounce ‘salmonella’ and didn’t know the names of other bacteria,” according to VanLonkhuyzen.

Although the public has become more sophisticated about bacteria over the years, the basic rules of the roast still elude them. And so they turn to the hotline ladies, an effusively warm and soothing group of mostly middle-age women with degrees in home economics, neat hairdos and experience in the kitchen that they enjoy sharing with the public.

“People always say that it’s so nice to talk to a real person in the federal government who actually answers your questions,” VanLonkhuyzen said. “I always say, ‘It’s my pleasure talking to you.’ ”

While the majority of callers are from the East Coast and ask about safe handling and storage of meat and poultry, the Californians weigh in with the most cutting-edge culinary questions.

A few years ago, they all wanted to know how to deep-fry turkeys at 500 degrees; this year the hot recipe calls for soaking the bird in heavily salted water before cooking.

“And there’s always questions about exotic methods of basting with a citrus solution,” VanLonkhuyzen said. “And a lot of deep-frying of turkeys. A lot.”

In just 10 minutes during an afternoon earlier this week, Sandy King heard from four callers, mostly from the Midwest. One man, a recent widower, had had a turkey in the freezer for four years and wanted to know if he could serve it today. The turkey was safe to eat, King told him, but she gently suggested he might want to buy a new one to make sure of the outcome of this, the first Thanksgiving dinner he would be cooking.

“You have to be careful not to hurt people’s feelings,” King said.

Although they write brochures and reports, record food safety messages and supply a vast amount of information by mail, the hotline ladies are not supposed to give out medical advice or recipes. But sometimes, well, it just comes out.

For example, the other day Kathy Bernard’s 30th call came from a woman trying to soften an ingredient of her corn bread stuffing before she packed it in her bird.

“I normally saute a little chicken broth, celery and onions to soften it all up,” Bernard, a biologist with a degree in food science and a lot of experience feeding a family, told the caller. “I also use some to stuff the turkey and bake some on the side because I have people who like it moist and people who like it crispy.”

To ensure that hotline staffers give out consistent information, they each have a turkey manual at their side that contains every imaginable fact. But the women are so skilled that they rarely refer to it unless they receive a really obscure question. (A tom turkey, for example, gobbles; a hen turkey makes a clucking noise.)

After today, there will be a week of questions about leftovers and then a big lull in the number of calls, and then months and months of takeout food and pop-up timer crises.

And of course, there’s the marriage counseling.

“I can’t tell you how many times we get a couple on the line who are arguing over some point or other in the kitchen and want us to solve their dispute,” King said. “We try always to be tactful.”

The hotline number is (800) 535-4555 and is open today until 11 a.m. PST. Its normal hours are 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. PST, Monday-Friday. Recorded messages are available. There is also food safety information at the USDA Web site, https://www.fsis.usda.gov.

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