FOOD SAFETY A BIGGER WORRY THAN Y2K.

• Position: Canning and preserving food safely - Brief Article

You may have more to fear from home canning by novices than from Y2K computer crashes, maintains Bill Evers, a foods and nutrition specialist at Purdue University's Cooperative Extension Service, West Lafayette, Ind. Concerns about social and economic disruptions that might occur if computers crash at midnight on the last day of this year have prompted some people to investigate canning their own food. He warns that food preserved at home by inexperienced canners may be the more potent threat.

"Some people want to preserve their own food because they think that all of the supply and food delivery systems will fail at 12:01 a.m. on New Year's Day. We feel that the chance of food poisoning from home-preserved food is greater than the very, very unlikely chance of a collapse of the food delivery system.

"In low-acid foods, essentially all non-fruits, the botulinum organism can...