Mac, you may do anything you want, and eat anything you can get down. I simply wanted to make the point to others here that you weren't offering good advice.

Byrd_Huntr - the first time you did it, the costs would exceed buying it in the grocery store. But for the basic components (pressure canner, jars, rings, lids), the cost would dwindle the more you used it because all of those are almost infinitely reusable except the lids. $300 would get you started and last for years.

And if there happened to be a longer-term power outage and you had a freezer full of meat, you could can a lot of it before it spoiled over a makeshift wood stove. In a longer-term situation, you could can 'wild' meat (a stray cow or flock of pitbulls).

Canning equipment really has to be considered an investment. You know, like power tools! *grinning*

Re: 'Mechanical ventilation': Botulism is a paralytic poison, and if you are being treated for it in a hospital, it is likely that your breathing mechanisms would be paralyzed, and you would be put on a machine that would breathe for you. Do you remember polio?

IL Bob: '... also possible to get botulism poisoning from ingesting contaminated meat or getting the spores in an open wound, so how is it safe to eat pork at 160 degrees?'

The Botulisum toxin is produced from the Clostridium bacteria only under airless (anaerobic) conditions. It won't be created in meats that are exposed to air and cooked thoroughly enough to kill parasites (like 160ºF). So, the Clostridium bacteria can be sitting on your pork roast, waving at you, and when you cook that pork by any method where air is involved, it will be killed. But if the Clostridium is on/in the meat, and the meat is canned using only the waterbath method, the temp won't be high enough to kill the bacteria. Then with the airless conditions within the jar or can, the bacteria will start creating the botulism toxin, which will contaminate the meat. It is colorless, tasteless and otherwise invisible. And it doesn't take very much of the toxin to kill. It has been said that a single pint jar of pure Botulism toxin is enough to poison every person on the face of the earth.

Clostridium in wounds requires the same conditions: no air. That usually means a fairly deep cut or puncture wound that doesn't have exposure to air. (Think twice before using super glue on wounds!) I am assuming that Botulism has sort of the same growth conditions that tetanus has: initial contamination, deep wound, no air. But at least you can be vaccinated against tetanus, but there's no such thing for Clostridium/Botulism.

Sue