I wash chicken and some cuts of pork (large pork loins and pork butts), then pat them dry on a large cooking sheet that I use just for handling large cuts of meat (I also have a dedicated cookie sheet just for taking meat to and from the grill). I wash the chicken, loin or butt in the sink and immediately wash and clean the sink with hot soapy water.
I’ve never washed the meat to remove bacteria like the USDA article suggests. I always wash it to get the slimy film off of the meat. When you open chicken or a pork loin, or a butt, the blood/juice have gotten all over the meat, and I don’t like it. And since I often cut up large portions of meat to smaller portions for freezing, I don’t’ want a blood juice popsicle surrounding my meat!
This doesn’t happen often with a whole chicken, but it always happens with large loins and bags of chicken thighs, and very often with a butt. But, with a whole chicken, especially one with the organs inside (which is actually getting rare here lately), I wash it anyway since I like to rinse out the cavity of the bird. Again, it’s not about washing out bacteria, but about getting any coagulated blood and bits from out of the cavity.
I never wash beef as this never seems to happen to beef. And If I buy the meat from the meat counter and pick out myself, I don’t wash it since it doesn’t have the slimy blood juice all over it.