Don't Wash Chicken
 

The Food Standards Agency is telling Brits not to wash chicken.

I dont usually wash chicken, but i do wash the utensils and chopping boards after i have prepared it. Surely the same risk would apply.

This article doesn't wash with me.

Could be, but you know they have to be sanitized, so you don't have a choice.

The potential for splashes is still there though. I just reckon they'd be better of teaching the public better food safety standards though.

When you wash boards and utensils you're not rinsing them under running water, right?
You wash them in a sink/ bowl/ dishwasher with a detergent. Even splashes of that water will therefore not contain live bacteria.
People who "wash" chicken are rinsing it under a tap.

I agree that general food safety standards do help, this being one of them.

We never washed chicken in my house.
But then we don't refrigerate eggs either.

I have to disagree with their analysis of washing chicken. I cook a lot of chicken, I smoke chicken, grill chicken, boil chicken, bake chicken and fry chicken. I always wash chicken as soon as I take it out of the package (as it is soaking in a water and blood mixture along with a paper tampon) and after cutting up the chicken I wash it again to remove the loose bits. I think the key to what I do is after I am done preparing a chicken is that I wash the counters and everything associated with the preparation in soap and water and after that I wash them with an alcohol mixture of 50-50 alcohol and water.

I grew up on the farm without electricity and we slaughtered chickens on a daily basis. The only cooling we had was icebox and the celler which we didn't use much. I don't remember anyone ever getting sick from salmonella or any other chicken or bacteria related illnesses.

I remember a book that I read from World War I that had the statement "cleanliness is next to godliness and here in the war it's next to impossible". However even without electricity and cooling we managed to eat chickens fairly regularly.

I still agree with the statement that cleanliness is next to godliness and take all precautions when preparing chicken. This is my opinion and your mileage may vary based on conditions and handling.

JR

Yes, but your live chickens were in clean, healthy conditions to begin with. When you are eating factory-farmed chickens, where the ones on the bottom racks are literally being shit on by the chickens above them all day, your chicken is much more likely to be contaminated right out of the package.

I buy only Amish raised chicken, that are not raised in cages stacked up like that. And I always wash my chicken, because my Mother and Grandmother washed them and nobody got sick. I wash them in cold water and I don't splash the water all over the place. When I clean up, I use hot water and bleach. And nobody ever gets sick. Knock on wood.

All I know is you ain't supposed to wash your chickens before they're hatched.

Seriously, I can't imagine not rinsing chicken. If nothing else, it seems less slimy to me, pre-cooked. But the article states that the Campylobacter bacteria can not only "cause severe illness and death, but it costs the economy hundreds of millions of pounds a year as a result of sickness absence and the burden on the NHS."

I think the death part precludes any concerns about irritable bowel syndrome or sickness absence. Then again, it's like adding insult to injury, isn't it, being dead AND having a tummyache.

I have my chicken dry-cleaned.

Haggis!


Sent by thought transference

As I mentioned in another thread, don't try to wash your daughter's pet rooster while it is alive. They do not like bubble baths no matter how much your child pleads.

I hate that damn rooster. I'm determined to outlive him so I can make chicken and dumplings. Probably will be the best thing I ever eat...

Have you ever slaughtered chickens? I have a friend who raises truly free range chickens with plenty of open land for them to roam. Everything about any chicken's life is filthy and shit covered.

I'll upload a photo essay I made of the slaughtering process if you like.

Rinse those fuckers. Twice.

For serious reals.

When Dad kills his chooks, they get dunked in the boiler before they're plucked, then they get washed afterwards too. I reckon his chooks are pretty clean by the time they get to the kitchen.

In the huge chicken farming operations around here, bldgs 200 feet wide by 600-1200 feet long, the chickens do not 'shit on one another'. The chicken shit is fed to a water/conveyor set-up, and moved outside to be collected and removed.

As usual, YMMV.