Regarding the urban myth that "cooking kills all the bad stuff," ...

Cooking generally renders most "parasitic organisms" harmless. Quite fortunately there are many organisms that can infect food that are in this category, so we survive in spite of their common appearance.

There are a few organisms, bacterial and fungal, where the toxic hazard is not as much from the organism itself, but from the waste products the organism secretes. Botulin is one of these, and there is good reason to suspect that the ergot fungus may also be of this kind.

While cooking will generally kill the botulin producing organism, it does not significantly affect the botulin toxin secreted by the "bug" while it was growing in the can. You CANNOT make a botulin tainted food safe by cooking it, at least according to all the "home canning instructions" and medical reports on botulin toxicity that I've ever seen from several authoritative sources.

While I haven't seen comment specific to the ergot fungus, it is quite obvious, from the number of cases of toxicity reported, that ordinary baking temperatures do not reliably inactivate toxins that it produces.

Anybody got any better info?

John