What is wrong with this commercial? I have to figure it out fro my Microbiology class.?

Question

A Clorox advertisement published in 1993 carried the following message: "Raw foods like chicken can carry germs that cause salmonella sickness. It's important to kill the bacteria on any surface raw foods touch with a little Clorox. Soap and water won't do the trick." Immediately above the statement was a photo of a raw chicken, a green pepper, three carrots and a red Bermuda onion. At the bottom of the page a box describes "a little Clorox" as a solution made by mixing a sink full of water with 1/8 cup of Regular Clorox Liquid Bleach. How many things can you find wrong with this advertisement?

Answer 1

No mention of the time span required to disinfect e.g. contact with solution is required for 30 second or 5 minutes?. No indication that rinsing the solution off may negate its effectiveness. Not sufficient information of correct dilution levels for effective disinfection.
No mention of other hygiene procedures to prevent cross contamination e.g washing hands between meat handling and handling raw fruit/vegetables. Not using unwashed utensils between the two. No mention that cooking destroys the bacteria.

Answer 2

First of all I don't know if they are cleaning the utensils with Clorox or the meat?

But i guess its the utensils they are using the Clorox on.
Maybe the water isnt hot, to kill off the germs, you need detergent and hot water

After cooking the raw meat, you have killed the germs, so the Clorox doent have to do much work when cleaning the utensils because the heat when cooking has killed off the germs and so no germs on the utensils.

Also you don't Hwen handling raw meat and vegetables, they should always should be handled in two distinctive areas

I don't know if this helps, but i hope it gives you some idea

Also maybe its not possible that the germ causing Salmonella sickness can never be found on the raw food. Im just guessing, so yeah

Answer 3

Technically, there is only one wrong thing; the statement that "soap and water won't do the trick".

Soap certainly does do the trick because the detergent dissolves lipid-containing substances like cell membranes (which all bacteria have).

If a "standard" sink contains 6 gallons, then 1/8 cup in 6 gallons equals a 1 in 768 dilution, which would qualify as "a little". And this amount of Clorox would kill most bacteria and viruses.

Although peppers, carrots and onion are not chickens, they can contain germs.

Answer 4

Assuming the claim that Clorox will kill bacteria is true, and your synopsis gives no evidence to the contrary, the only thing I see wrong is that 'a sink full' is an imprecise measurement. A small sink plus the stated amount of bleach would have more disinfecting power than a large sink with the same amount of bleach.

Answer 5

The only thing that comes to mind is that Chlorox will give you a log 5 kill rate, whil soap and water aren't within a couple of powers of magnitude. This isn't the answer but may put you on the right track.

Good luck