Latest News: Don't Wash Chickens!

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And, not uncommonly, there are the greens and other salad makings that will be eaten raw (and may already have been washed themselves). From a bacteriological view, the meat isn't important, as it will be cooked and the bacteria destroyed. But the greens will go into the salad with their newly acquired bacterial load. (Not to mention the dish drainer rack that's probably sitting right there getting contaminated.)

Washing chicken is a powerful habit, but it accomplished nothing in terms of food safety. It may, however, wash away bits of guts and such that you'd rather not see go into your meal, even if they are in no way harmful. I no longer wash chicken, simply because it mandates a more vigorous cleaning regimen for that end of the kitchen.

Besides, you know most people's idea of "washing" chicken is to rinse it under running water. But that's like pretending that rinsing your hands under running cold water is plenty fine following a trip to the toilet. If you're worried about anything on the chicken, it's fecal bacteria that was floating around the packing facility, so if you feel obliged to wash hands with soap and water after the toilet, why do you think rinsing chicken is enough? Even with soap, hand washing has to be far more vigorous than it usually is to do a decent job of removing bacteria. Hands are as bad as chicken. They both have millions of tiny places for bugs to hide and stick.

So, wash your chicken with soap and water? I won't. I'll wash my hands properly, because I'll be handling the salad. And I may well wash out a chicken cavity. But I'm always mindful that all operations to wash away bacteria also spread bacteria.

Probably as well that, even in our overly sanitized world, we have robust immune systems and rarely get into difficulty, despite ingestion of lots of potentially harmful bacteria daily. Just lay off the antibacterial products. don't be Mom the Bioterrorist.
 
Oh, and the animation is just that, someone's notion, and in no way a reality image, although probably not too far off, other than the fact that the droplets are likely smaller than shown. I could, I suppose, test the theory by dosing a carcass with the appropriate substance, rinsing it under fast running water and checking the area with a forensic light, of which I have several. Actually, I'm not sure I want to know. Like scanning your motel room bed area for body fluids. Not for the squeamish.
 
Yes, but.

Then plastic boards go into the DW which sanitizes them by subjecting them to high temperature water.

Maybe. Scarring on the plastic surface from knife cuts can harbor bacteria and I believe it's possible they may survive the dishwasher. You may reach a different conclusion :)
 
Maybe. Scarring on the plastic surface from knife cuts can harbor bacteria and I believe it's possible they may survive the dishwasher. You may reach a different conclusion :)


I believe it's possible the sanitization process in the DW works just fine.
 
I'm no a chicken or meat washer. I wash my cutting boards, but am not afraid to cut veggies on the same board that I cut the raw meat on, if the veggies are going to be cooked, especially with the meat. The veggies get at least as hot as the meat does, when the meat is considered safe, and usually much hotter.

I don't believe I've had a case of food poisoning in my life, and I even ate mostly raw bacon once, as a young teen on a camp out. I don't recommend it of course.

When processing veggies to be eaten raw, or lightly cooked, I wash them thoroughly, and process on a freshly washed cutting board. I don't bleach the boards but do wash in very hot, soapy water. The plastic ones also go into the dishwasher.

I am one of those who believe that if we live in a germ-free world, we never give ourselves the ability to develop a healthy, and strong immune system. I don't get infections, except one time. I've been playing in the natural world of dirt and germs all of my life. The only sicknesses I've gotten from micro-critters are colds, and flue's, oh, and chicken pox when I was a kid.

Eat healthy food, get lots of energetic exercise, sleep 7 to 8 hours a night, and keep stress low. These practices will keep you healthier than fretting over food-borne microbes excessively. Of course, use intelligence when handling food. But don't stress about it.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
Mercy! I rinse my chicken really well, rubbing the water all over it. But I clean the sink and surrounding areas with Clorox Clean-Up afterwards.

No one here has gotten sick or died yet from my chicken rinsing, but it's probably a good idea to clean up the area after rinsing it.

I did read the article, and maybe taking the chicken out to the backyard and rinsing it with the hose is an idea, if you're really worried about bugs.

I do use a plastic cutting board for cutting up chicken and everything else. I got rid of my wooden ones quite a while ago.
Actually you may have made a mistake doing that. I read an article in the Daily Telegraph a few years back about some research which was done by ? and which showed that bacteria survived better on plastic than wood. Something to do with the enzymes in the wood destroying them IIRC, whereas the nasty little beasties get into the knife cuts in the plastic and breed (No they don't breed, they divide and multiply.)

Sorry to be so vague but it was a long time ago.

Just found this. Quite enlightening
UC-Davis Food Safety Laboratory: Cutting Board Research

I was told about 30 years ago to only use wooden boards which were cut lengthways out of hard wood and not to use end cut boards (which are very fashionable these days) for the same reason. I think it was my uncle the butcher who told me that.

I scrap my chopping boards with a sharp knife to remove food resudue if necessary and then scrub them with hot water, washing up liquid and a clean washing up brush, rinse well and stand on end to dry not on the side edge.
 
Here's the full paper:
http://frogojt.com/Cuttingboards.pdf

And I note in the brief: "...and the effect of cleaning the board regularly after preparing meat on it was not statistically significant."

On quick reading, some other studies seem to suggest that wood is inferior in terms of contamination. But when you read closely, most of these are clearly studying where bacteria can survive inside the wood structure. It can indeed survive for a time. But these do not contradict the Clive study, because they were not studying surface contamination, and that is what we worry about.

A published formal survey of research in the field found no reason to believe plastic was superior. Given that plastic cutting boards don't stay pristine very long before they are covered in cuts, there doesn't seem to be much reason to choose them, other than their better tolerance of some sanitizing methods that few of us use.

And before we get too cocky about the efficacy of our cleaning methods. consider that a study compared the bacteria removal effects of chlorine (bleach) and iodine (Betadine) solutions on various food prep surfaces and found iodine significantly better but far from total control. They speculate that bacteria have become tolerant of chlorine after many decades of municipal water treatment. But Iodine at higher temperature (70C), was 100% of some of the most common bacterial concerns with food on stainless steel and plastic and somewhat lower on wood surfaces.

I would not be too smug about microwaving, either. Microwaving works on things like sponges, only when the sponge is wet, because it heats the water to and beyond the "instant kill" zone for bacteria.

Have you ever tried to dry a plastic bowl in a microwave oven? You expect that the water droplets will just go pouf and be gone. But chances are that they will sit there for quite a while, slowly evaporating. Plastics have elastomers, and many have a dielectric loss even higher than water. And you have very little water. So most of the energy goes into the bowl. "Microwave save" doesn't mean immune to microwaves. It merely means that the material won't leak chemicals into the food. So the effect of microwaving a plastic cutting board, hoping to kill the invisibly small bacteria hiding in what amounts to, for them, effect shielding, may well not be having much effect.

Bacteria also have enormous surface area relative to their volume. (An elephant has a tiny surface area, hence is very efficient.) The largest e-coli are 1.5 by 6 micrometers. You may heat up the water inside the bacteria, but they may also easily radiate it away, since the air in the oven does not heat appreciably. Plus...

Microwave ovens have cold spots. A stationary cutting board in the oven will have some areas barely affected. And if rotated constantly will have all areas moving in and out of hot spots.

I don't think I'm buying the microwave as a bacteria killer on dry surfaces without proof. My feeling is that it is not. Doubters might want to try an experiment. Give some ants a nice cookie, say oatmeal. (We're going to make use of the ants, so they ought to get something out of it.) Put cookie and ants on a plate in the microwave and fire it up. Chances are, the cookie will be ruined before the ants are dead, except, perhaps, for any who stay on the hottest part of the cookie. The free running ants will be alive. So, will it kill bacteria?
 
That is a pretty old news.

Is it? Well it may be known to some but I heard about it on the radio as current news hence why I posted the info.

I have never washed a chicken, since cooking the chicken properly is sufficient to kill all bacteria. I have not found the chicken to be slimy in its packaging. I am in the UK.

(I do wash fish though to rid of slime. I descale certain fish inside a large plastic bag).

Re. chopping boards. I have a plastic one and use hot water and washing up liquid on it vigorously if I have cut up meat on it. Occasionally I scrub it with salt.
 
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If the chicken comes in one of those plastic wrapped trays from the grocery store I wash it and dry it before using. If I buy it from the butchers counter and they are wrapped in paper they don't seem to need to be rinsed off.
 
Is it? Well it may be known to some but I heard about it on the radio as current news hence why I posted the info.

I have never washed a chicken, since cooking the chicken properly is sufficient to kill all bacteria. I have not found the chicken to be slimy in its packaging. I am in the UK.

(I do wash fish though to rid of slime. I descale certain fish inside a large plastic bag).

Re. chopping boards. I have a plastic one and use hot water and washing up liquid on it vigorously if I have cut up meat on it. Occasionally I scrub it with salt.
Don't take it to heart, Creative. We get like this sometimes but we don't mean any harm. ;)

Don't let it put you off us.
 
Don't take it to heart, Creative. We get like this sometimes but we don't mean any harm. ;)

Don't let it put you off us.

Thanks for that....it did feel a bit like "don't shoot the messenger!" :huh:

I just realised why the chicken I buy (packaged) is not slimy - I always buy organic so maybe that is why.
 
Chicken purchased in most grocery stores, and packed in plastic, is injected with a brine solution to add flavor, or so says the package. It also adds weight, allowing the store to charge you more money, as the chicken is sold by weight. That extra brine is not natural to the bird, and will leak out of the flesh, making the chicken seem slimy. Chickens that I've butchered myself are not slimy at all. They also have more flavor because their natural flavor isn't diluted by add water.

Organic chicken simply means that it was fed food that is free of pesticides, and man-made vitamins. The processing of the chicken after it's butchered, in large part, determines the quality of the product that goes into your recipes.

I am convinced that truly free-ranged chickens are more healthy, and flavorful because they eat what they were designed to eat, grains, bugs, worms, mice, etc. Chickens are omnivores. In addition to diet, they get more exercise, which pumps more blood through the muscles, which in turn make the meat more flavorful.

Sadly, due to ridiculous laws, most of us are not allowed to raise our own poultry, of any kind. We have to rely on what's available to us. To me, our nation is sad. We let the urban population, much of which have never seen a farm, or know anything about food, control what is available to us. And what they do know, is force fed to them by an industry that is concerned primarily with profit, not quality.

At least, that's how I see it.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
Chicken purchased in most grocery stores, and packed in plastic, is injected with a brine solution to add flavor, or so says the package. It also adds weight, allowing the store to charge you more money, as the chicken is sold by weight. That extra brine is not natural to the bird, and will leak out of the flesh, making the chicken seem slimy. Chickens that I've butchered myself are not slimy at all. They also have more flavor because their natural flavor isn't diluted by add water.

Organic chicken simply means that it was fed food that is free of pesticides, and man-made vitamins. The processing of the chicken after it's butchered, in large part, determines the quality of the product that goes into your recipes.

I am convinced that truly free-ranged chickens are more healthy, and flavorful because they eat what they were designed to eat, grains, bugs, worms, mice, etc. Chickens are omnivores. In addition to diet, they get more exercise, which pumps more blood through the muscles, which in turn make the meat more flavorful.

Sadly, due to ridiculous laws, most of us are not allowed to raise our own poultry, of any kind. We have to rely on what's available to us. To me, our nation is sad. We let the urban population, much of which have never seen a farm, or know anything about food, control what is available to us. And what they do know, is force fed to them by an industry that is concerned primarily with profit, not quality.

At least, that's how I see it.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North

Maybe the laws in your country are different to the food practises here in UK. Free range chickens are usually fed same dubious food as battery hens (co-starring DPM/dried poulty manure) but allowed access to the outside in daylight hours. However, organic chicken is both allowed outside and is fed a more natural diet and are much less likely to be injected with antibiotics.
 
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