Should I be concerned?

  I freeze them first.  Will freezing kill Staph?  I know it kills Trich-a-whatever.

Does freezing kill trichinosis? 

 Ottoluv, ya still there?

Editing in:

From Wikipedia: re. trichinosis , how to prevent infestation

Prevention

• Cooking meat products to an internal temperature of 165 °F (74 °C)for a minimum of 15 seconds.
• Cooking pork to a uniform internal temperature of at least 144 °F (62.2 °C), per US FDA Title 9 section 318.10. It is prudent to use a margin of error to allow for variation in internal temperature and error in the thermometer.
• Freezing pork less than 6 inches thick for 20 days at 5 °F (−15 °C) or three days at −4 °F (−20 °C) kills larval worms.
• Cooking wild game meat thoroughly. Freezing wild game meats, unlike freezing pork products, even for long periods of time, may not effectively kill all worms. This is because the species of trichinella that typically infects wild game is more resistant to freezing than the species that infects pigs.
• Cooking all meat fed to pigs or other wild animals.
• Keeping pigs in clean pens with floors that can be washed (such as concrete). This is standard in Germany, where raw pork is a common delicacy and trichinosis is rarer than in the U.S.^{[citation needed]}
• Not allowing hogs to eat uncooked carcasses of other animals, including rats, which may be infected with trichinosis.
• Cleaning meat grinders thoroughly when preparing ground meats.
• Control and destruction of meat containing trichinae, e.g., removal and proper disposal of porcine diaphragms prior to public sale of meat.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention makes the following recommendation: "Curing (salting), drying, smoking, or microwaving meat does not consistently kill infective worms."^[2] However, under controlled commercial food processing conditions some of these methods are considered effective by the United States Department of Agriculture.^[3]

 I was a food service manager for many years.  The inspections we underwent in this state were looking for food to be held at above 180 degrees (um, I think - not good with numbers and it's been 15 years), dishes to be santized with water above 190 degrees (ten minutes - and I remember this one), and prepared food had to be stored below 35 degrees as verified with a room temp thermometer placed in the fridge reaching that temp in less than ten minutes.

I understood that cooking actually killed bacteria, but that prepared food was at risk because of inevitable cross-contamination.  The sanitation of dishes was a huge deal because we didn't have a dishwasher - we washed by hand, so we had a seperate santizing tank on our dishwashing sink.  We had to scrub that thing with a special solution between every batch of dishes, and there was a heater that had to be taken apart and put back together to do it (very similar to a stock tank heater, but bigger).  There was a thermometer on the opposite side of the tank from the heater that had to reach 190 degrees F before you could start washing and what a pain that was during rush times!

I don't think freezing will kill staph, either, but I don't think it takes a lot of heat to kill it.  And, oddly, strong acid will kill it - lemon, vinegar, hydrochloric like in stomach acid.  Every bug has it's limits - environmentally persistent ones like the cold virus and coccidea tend to be limited in their ability to mutate into something really evil.  If a bug becomes very dangerous, many times it will give up persistence - for instance, salmonella and e-coli bacteria can be discouraged from multiplying by simply encouraging a state of probiotic health in the gi.

We have yet to encounter a true "superbug" - one that is at once persistent (and ispo facto highly contagious), adaptable, and virulent.  Or, if we have, we haven't been told yet!

 Becca's Eggy.  And one for Jennie