Protecting families from contaminated food and water
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Protecting families from contaminated food and water
Posted in Food Safety,Our Blog on August 4, 2025
Despite what you saw growing up, experts say, don’t rinse raw chicken!
Did you grow up watching your parent rinse the raw chicken off in the sink before deciding what to make for dinner? I did. We now know that the general rule is don’t rinse raw chicken, but today we look at what 9 experts have to say about the topic and why.
Do not rinse raw meat, such as chicken, she says. Doing so may help spread harmful bacteria, including via tiny airborne water droplets. Pretty blunt and to the point if you ask me, but here are some other great kitchen food safety tips that we tend to drop the ball on from time to time, especially the one about the sponges.
Unfortunately, individual consumers don’t have total control over food safety – systemic factors have a significant impact on the quality of what we eat.
The FDA has faced significant reductions in funding and staff, which “could lead to gaps in inspection and monitoring”, says Yu. Reports suggest that spending freezes are already limiting food safety inspectors’ ability to travel to farms or acquire food samples for testing.
For individuals at home, less regulatory oversight means higher-stakes decisions at the grocery store. Common food categories such as meat, eggs, shellfish, sprouts, greens and seeded vegetables such as tomatoes and cucumbers are all relatively high-risk for contamination.
“Now is a good time for consumers to be more cautious,” says Yu, particularly with “high-risk foods like leafy greens, especially bagged lettuce”, which is prone to contamination with pathogens such as salmonella, listeria and E coli because of the way the greens are mixed from different farms and mass-processed before packaging.
Morticia has changed her eating habits to prioritize safety in light of weaker industry regulations. “I went vegan in January, because most foodborne pathogens are zoonotic in origin, meaning they come from cows and pigs and chickens,” she says. She’s also opting for more stir-fries and fewer salads. “Cooking all of my foods significantly lowers risk,” she says.
“Home cooks tend to underestimate how cross-contamination can spread bacteria across the kitchen,” says Dr Siyun Wang, professor of food safety engineering at the University of British Columbia. E coli, salmonella and listeria can easily transfer from raw produce, meat and eggs to other points we touch, such as a refrigerator or faucet handle, where Wang’s research has shown they may be able to linger for weeks.
Sanitize surfaces: Dr Jae-Hyuk Yu, a professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recommends using a bleach solution (one tablespoon of bleach per gallon of water), an Environmental Protection Agency-registered kitchen disinfectant, or an alcohol-based spray for sanitizing hard surfaces, especially after preparing raw meat. And when handling cleaning chemicals, use gloves and ventilate well. He recommends cleaning fridge shelves monthly and ensuring your fridge is consistently under 40F (4C) to prevent bacteria from lurking around.
“Sponges are notorious bacterial reservoirs,” says Yu. “Cleaning a knife used on raw chicken with a sponge, then using that same sponge on other dishes, can absolutely spread dangerous pathogens.” If you must use a sponge, microwave it, wet, for one to two minutes once a day or run it through the dishwasher with a heat-dry cycle, he advises. Yu replaces kitchen sponges every one to two weeks, and personally prefers sanitizable dishcloths that can be changed daily and put through a hot laundry cycle.
Leaving food out at room temperature is “essentially incubating the bacteria that are in that food”, says an Idaho-based microbiologist and medical laboratory scientist certified by the American Society for Clinical Pathology who goes by the pseudonym Morticia to avoid harassment as she shares food science information online. This gives them time to produce enterotoxins that can lead to symptoms like vomiting. “A lot of these toxins are heat stable,” she says. Reheating them may get rid of bacteria, “but the toxins will still make you sick”.
Morticia recommends being especially careful with starchy leftovers like rice and pasta, where Bacillus cereus, a nasty foodborne pathogen, can start to grow within hours if left out.
In the UK and the EU, the “use by” date indicates when a product is no longer safe to eat. “Respecting these dates is one of the best ways of avoiding potential health problems,” says Dr Alvaro San Millan, an expert in bacteria at the National Center for Biotechnology in Madrid. (In the US, with the exception of infant formula, product dating is not federally required.)
In the UK, EU and US, the “best before” date indicates when a food will be at its best quality, but does not relate to food safety. Some foods, such as packaged snacks, may be fine to eat days or weeks after their best before date has passed, particularly if they are unopened or have been properly stored. But it’s not always easy to tell if something has gone bad.
“If food smells or tastes funny, that’s definitely a red flag,” says San Millan. But pathogens can accumulate without alerting our senses to trouble. “Certain bacteria, such as salmonella, can produce infections in humans even if they are at a very low concentration in the food – so low that you could never appreciate any change in a sniff or taste test,” says San Millan.
Most of the time, eating questionable food will probably only lead to some gastrointestinal discomfort, but “if you are unlucky and get infected by bacteria such as listeria or salmonella, or intoxicated with botulinum toxin, you may be in serious trouble”, he says.
People have used food preservation techniques like salting and pickling for millennia. But simply adding preservative ingredients to a dish doesn’t “shield” it from bacteria. Spicy, salty or acidic elements might slow spoilage under specific conditions, as with jerky or sauerkraut, but don’t guarantee protection from harmful pathogens. There have been listeria and salmonella outbreaks from pickles, for instance, notes Morticia.
“There isn’t much of a difference in regard to bacterial contamination and pathogen transmission” when it comes to organic and conventional produce, Morticia says.
However, when buying local, “the supply chain is a lot shorter and fewer people are coming into contact with that food,” she says. This means “you are at a lower risk of transmission of some pathogens,” she says.
For more food safety tips, please follow Make Food Safe.