Wow. I'm really glad you stated that publicly because I do the same and always felt a little weird/extreme for how I handle chicken. I nearly always do the chicken handling last and then sanitize everything with disinfectant afterwards including large areas of the countertop. The frequency of outbreaks related to chicken has made me very careful when dealing with chicken.

I too handle chicken like its covered in hydrofluoric acid mixed with methyl mercury.

I got very, very sick once from mishandling chicken. It was "just" campylobacter. But it was much worse than the average case. I ended up in the ER and afterwards the county CDC wanted to know if I left the county, etc. Long story short, it took me 3 months to get over it and a solid year to regain all of the lost weight and strength. I'm now very thorough with my food handling and preparation.

yeah, totally. chicken is nuclear material / lava in my kitchen. i do all the same and i empty the sink before handling the meat in it. i also hand wash all chicken contaminated dishes in the sink.

Don’t modern dish washers do a better job at sanitizes dish than hand washing?

Yes

A lot of it comes down to higher temperatures in the dishwasher

I remember getting lectured on this back when little-ish me worked as a short order cook. And to never store chicken on top of beef in the freezer.

what's the reason for chicken/beef ordering?

Anything above has the risk of dripping onto whatever is below (even if you are careful). Chicken has higher incidence of bacteria growth, spoils faster.

In addition, beef is typically cooked to a much lower temperature than chicken, between 120 and 140 F, which is not hot enough to kill something like salmonella, if the beef has been contaminated from spoiled poultry dripping from above.

The outer packaging is often contaminated, and can contaminate the beef packaging. Bacteria survive in the freezer.

Beef, except for pre-ground beef, is generally much safer than poultry.

Ditto here (chicken).

And ditto for beef.

And ditto for pork.

And ditto for lamb/mutton.

And I generally buy "cook long & slow" cuts, so there is no "my thermometer said the spot I tested was hot enough..." FUD.

Do you not hand wash while cooking raw beef?

Less rigorously than when I'm handling chicken. Every time I touch chicken, I immediately go to the sink and start a 20 second hand washing routine. The risk is at an entirely different level.

Why do you continue to eat this food if you have to mentally accept that it's this dangerous to eat? This would drain me considerably if I had to do this routine for eating peppers and broccoli.

It's not that onerous if you've gotten used to staging your food handling. You just prep everything else, handle the chicken, set aside in a dedicated bowl, then wash your hands and go back to handling everything else.

Once I'm cooking, I just use a dedicated pair of steel tongs for moving chicken around, then I don't have to keep washing my hands, I just clean that set of utensils once I have a moment.

I think it's still worth the effort, it's just some specific food handling practices. After all, it's not like I don't practice the same caution when I'm handling any meat, and even for any other meat I'd have to wash my hands when moving from handling meat to veggies.

Not OP, but I treat chicken with a similar level of caution. I continue preparing and eating it because I like chicken and have several chicken-based dishes that I enjoy preparing. That said, it is draining, and it has made me buy and prepare raw chicken less often since I started being really careful about the prep procedure.

I guess I just love cooking. I love making all kinds of food. And some food I prepare are significantly more complicated than handwashing and keeping separate boards and utensils.

I respect that. Do what you love to do then ;)

Ironic you mention peppers because I take similar precautions when cooking with hot peppers, if any ends up on my fingers and I do something as simple as rub my eye I’m in got a bad time.

Yet I still do it, because it tastes good. I imagine OP’s reasons are similar.

But you are risking an irritated eye from chili peppers, not salmonella!

It’s not dangerous to eat, it’s risky if not prepared properly.

Similarly you need to be very careful with vegetables like scallions, some leafy greens, etc. Many people assume that they don’t need to wash bagged spinach, for example.

I think it's a little unfair to chalk this up to an assumption. Most of the bagged spinach that I can purchase at the supermarket comes labeled as "Washed & Ready to Eat" [1]. Whether that's true or not - and whether you prefer to wash your spinach anyway - is of course up to you. But it's explicitly labeled as safe.

[1] - http://t0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcR5UDimbyF_W_fUOKg...

I mean, there was just a huge recently an outbreak of salmonella from onions. Every food has some risk of being contaminated or spoiled. I assume you wash your broccoli and peppers, right?

I wonder how salmonella from onions works - it's pretty standard to always peel the onions so is the salmonella on the surface and your knife carries it through the onion or is the salmonella in the onion already?

“whole, fresh onions imported from the State of Chihuahua”, “Do not use, ship, or sell recalled onions. Suppliers and distributors that re-package raw onions should use extra vigilance in cleaning any surfaces and storage areas that may have come into contact with these products. If there has been potential cross contamination or mixing of onions from other sources with these products, suppliers and distributors should discard all comingled and potentially cross-contaminated product.” — https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/outbrea...

“It's not clear exactly how many people have been infected—the 808 number is a bare minimum. "The true number of sick people in an outbreak is likely much higher than the number reported," the CDC said, since many people may have chosen to ride out the sickness at home rather than seek medical care. The CDC estimates that only about one in every 30 salmonella cases actually get reported.” — https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2021/10/29/salm...

Rinsing vegetables is not the same as keeping them away from everything else in the kitchen and then vigorously sanitizing everything they touched.

It's on the same spectrum, though.

Just like taking a bath is on the same spectrum as scrubbing your skin with bleach

Yes definitely, I wash all my foods before eating. But I don't associate any kind of serious risk to most of the foods that I eat.

It’s not dangerous to eat if you cook it. I do this with all meat / fish. That it’s being called out for chicken versus other things surprises me.

Chicken has far and away the highest % of salmonella contamination of any common food.

It's something like 5% of chicken you buy at the grocery store.

Which says something about the conditions in which they are kept.

The US could vaccinate the chickens but they don't. Costco I think has the safest chickens.

Peppers, broccoli and onions can all get salmonella.

It's not dangerous to eat cooked, you just have to be careful with it raw.

You realize vegetables have shit on them, and can cross contaminate too?

Just eat tofu.

I’ve worn gloves when cooking it at home. But I also treat all meat this way (except the gloves, that stays with chicken). I also don’t put washed veggies on the same thing unwashed ones have been on. Basically anything you buy at the store seems like it’s had some sort of outbreak of something at one point, so I just treat everything as contaminated at first.