You've just found a turkey that's been in your freezer for years. Is it still OK to eat that turkey? Gary Crawford has an answer from an expert.

PARTICIPANTS: Gary Crawford and Meredith Carothers with the USDA's Meat and Poultry Hotline.

The USDA's Meat and Poultry Hotline number is 888-MPHOTLINE (888-674-6854) Listeners can also go online to Ask.usda.gov

Transcript

Let's go back to the year 2013.

The place?

Woo, very cold Siberia.

Scientists discover frozen in the ice a prehistoric specimen of Mammuthus primogenius, i.e. a woolly mammoth.

And this thing is pretty much intact.

Researchers even find liquid blood in this well-preserved mastodon, which had been trapped in the ice for only about 39,000 years.

Fast forward to this week.

The place?

The cold wasteland of your deep freeze, which mimics the climate of the place where the woolly mammoth was found.

You are doing an archaeological dig into the bottom-most depths, and you discover a perfectly preserved specimen of Meligryus gallopervo.

Yes, a frozen turkey, apparently undisturbed for years.

Has this ever happened to you or somebody that you know?

Yes.

This is Meredith Carruthers, a food safety expert with the Agriculture Department's Meat and Poultry Hotline, the number of which we'll give you in a minute.

And indeed, Meredith says they do get quite a few calls this time of year from people who have unearthed ancient turkeys in their freezers.

They want to know, is this thing still safe to eat?

And Meredith, what's the answer?

It's definitely safe to have a turkey in the freezer, because food-borne illness bacteria don't grow in the freezer.

So no matter how long something is frozen, it will remain safe.

The only thing that changes is the quality might diminish the longer that it's frozen for.

But your year-old, two-year-old turkey that might be in the freezer that you stuck in there and forgot about is definitely still going to be safe as long as it has been frozen that entire time.

A year or two years.

Sometimes these birds are in there for longer than two years, right, Meredith?

Yes, yes.

So as a quiz for our listeners, both of them, what do you think as far as calls to the hotline, what's the record for the length of time a turkey has been frozen, then unearthed, and prepared?

Two years, five, three, ten years?

And the answer is...

Meredith?

The record that we have gotten from our hotline calls is somebody was trying to use a five-year-old turkey that had been frozen for that long.

Whoa, five years, that's a long time.

And would that still be safe?

We told them as long as you haven't had any major power outages and it's been frozen that entire time, it is in fact safe to use.

I wonder if that caller with the five-year turkey actually did cook it and eat it.

Yes, we actually, they called us back and told us that it was super tasty and still just as delicious, which is incredible, considering, like I said, sometimes the quality is what's going to diminish the longer that something is frozen.

So your results may vary.

Now for answers to all of your holiday food safety and preparation questions, you can call the folks at the Meat & Poultry hotline.

Here's the number, 1-888-MP-HOTLINE, 1-888-MP-HOTLINE, or go online to ask.usda.gov, ask.usda.gov.

The experts will be working even on Thanksgiving Day from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Eastern Time.

Gary Crawford reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.