I had a container of cooked chicken pie filling in my freezer and after our son moved back in, he brought his pet snakes and stored their food (dead chickens and rats) in the bottom shelf of our freezer. The trouble is, they had started to defrost in the car while he was moving his belongings. I wasn't happy about them going in the freezer but I relented because of how much it would've cost him to replace it all. It wouldn't have been so bad except I later found the lid had lifted on the tupperware container the pie filling was in. I resealed it and put the container in a plastic bag as well, but I'm not game to eat it now. It could have been open for a few days or more. Would the pie filling be edible or would it be contaminated by the rotten dead animal smell in the bottom of the freezer and should I throw it out?
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1Welcome to the site - the general rule is "If in doubt, throw it out". More details on how the carcasses are contained would be helpful. My experience (with a freezer that thawed out unnoticed) is that the rotten smell will have permeated almost everything in the freezer and make most things inedible anyway, however, I don't know about putting potentially rotten meat into a working freezer.– bob1Commented Aug 24, 2022 at 2:38
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@bob1 From my reading of the story here there's not likely to be any actually rotting meat in the freezer – the snake food started to defrost but was then put in the freezer. It might well be outside the food safety zone but I wouldn't assume it is already at the stage of smelling bad. (The OP mentions a bad smell but it wasn't clear if it was already present or just a fear.)– dbmag9Commented Aug 24, 2022 at 6:19
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Whether or not it's safe to eat, it seems like you'll be worried about it if you eat it, so I would give up on this batch of chicken pie filling because you're unlikely to enjoy it if you're thinking about snake food. Depending on what's in it, maybe the snakes could enjoy it instead.– dbmag9Commented Aug 24, 2022 at 6:21
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@dbmag9 it was the "the rotten dead animal smell" part in the last sentence that I was going off.– bob1Commented Aug 24, 2022 at 10:05
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