The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service has issued post-hurricane food safety guidance that effectively mandates a full walk-in discard: if power has been out for several days, every item in the refrigerator and freezer must be thrown away.

The guidance targets both households and foodservice operators recovering from floods and prolonged outages. Its core message is blunt — never taste food to determine whether it is safe, and default to disposal when in doubt.

FSIS publishes a reference chart detailing what is safe or should be discarded after a prolonged outage. Operators rebuilding inventory should treat it as the deciding document before restocking.

What survives contact with flood water?

Very little. The guidance instructs operators to discard any food not in a waterproof container if there is any chance it touched flood water. Containers with screw caps, snap lids, pull tops and crimped caps are not waterproof — a category that covers most beverage and sauce packaging in a typical stockroom.

One exception exists. Undamaged, commercially prepared foods in all-metal cans and retort pouches — flexible, shelf-stable juice or seafood pouches — can be saved by following the FSIS Consumer's Guide to Food Safety: Severe Storms and Hurricanes.

Bottled water gets its own warning: screw caps are not waterproof, so any bottled water or beverage that may have contacted flood water must go. Where bottled water is unavailable, FSIS directs users to its instructions on boiling or disinfecting water.

Which utensils can be sanitized, and which must go?

Metal pans, utensils and ceramic dishes that came into contact with flood water can be saved. The protocol: wash thoroughly in hot soapy water, rinse, then sanitize by boiling in clean water or immersing for 15 minutes in a solution of one tablespoon of unscented liquid chlorine bleach per gallon of drinking water.

Three categories cannot be salvaged at all and must be discarded after any flood-water contact:

• Wooden cutting boards
• Plastic utensils
• Baby bottle nipples and pacifiers

For operators, that means a full replacement run on boards and plastic tools before reopening — a restocking cost to build into any storm-recovery budget alongside food losses.

Where to direct questions

FSIS runs the Meat and Poultry Hotline at 1-888-674-6854, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. EDT, in English or Spanish. Questions can also go to [email protected] or via live chat at Ask USDA.

With hurricane season forcing repeated closures and inventory losses across coastal markets, operators who follow the FSIS discard-and-sanitize protocol before reopening will limit both spoilage claims and the foodborne-illness exposure that follows flood events.