The Don’t Wash Your Chicken campaign done by Drexel University, came out of a USDA grant which was granted to the researchers to actually look for unique safety risks for minority populations.
There were focus groups and surveys throughout, to fill up the area and there were a couple safety risks identified regarding minority populations. They also identified, particularly in the focus groups that our minority populations reported washing their poultry sometimes with water, sometimes with warm water.
Researcher says “It was this theme of washing chicken, which we knew to be incorrect from what the USDA recommends”. Washing your raw poultry basically increases your chances of spreading bacteria around the kitchen. It does not get rid of the bacteria, it does not kill the bacteria, instead there is a chance that it will spray that bacteria. It is called aerosolization, so that now it may be in your sink or on you, or on your counter, or on any food that is right next to you.
In fact what is really going to kill that bacteria that we know is on that chicken is proper cooking, and that is really all that is going to completely get rid of that bacteria. They approached a colleague in Mexico State University who had expertise in the development of education material. And so their recommendation were the photo novella to reach a broad range of consumers as well as the videos.
So there is really no need to wash your raw poultry, it is raw meat and it is going to have bacteria on it, but again if you are going to cook it you don’t need to get it any cleaner generally than what it is.
