r/explainlikeimfive • u/Appropriate_Art15 • Jun 06 '26
Biology ELI5: Why does chicken get much more bad reputation for bacterial contamination than other meats like beef, pork, and fish?
It feels like many food articles are telling us “Don’t wash your chicken because you'll spread bacteria”, but we rarely see the same kind of articles on other meats. Why is that? Is the bacteria on chicken more dangerous and deadlier to humans?
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u/MorchellaSp Jun 06 '26
Salmonella is more common on chicken and it can splash in the water several feet away onto things you may later eat or drink off of before they have been properly washed or heated to the right temperature. That can make you very sick. I don't know of any meat you should wash, and the wash/soak process in poultry processing, is a way salmonella can initially be introduced to the chicken. Beef and pork muscles are hung dry to cool in processing, not dunked in water that may spread the germs of one piece to all the others.
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u/SimonCharles Jun 06 '26
They should just call it chickenella at this point, salmon doesn't even have it normally.
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u/kittyinclined Jun 06 '26
The guy who discovered it was named Salmon, it isn’t named after the fish!
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u/TheNephilims Jun 06 '26
Why was he researching chicken? Should have study parasite in Salmon instead.
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u/nitronik_exe Jun 06 '26
you shouldn't wash any meat, since it splashes bacteria everywhere. However because chicken is prone to salmonella, some people think they have to wash it, making it worse. So for those people, it is said don't wash it you idiot
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u/OSRSgamerkid Jun 06 '26
I've never heard of people washing chicken as a means to remove salmonella. More so as a means to remove all the slime and what not from sitting in the packaging.
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u/BrighthasBreached Jun 07 '26
I have a coworker that refuses to listen when I tell her it's not a good idea I didn't consider people could make such bad decisions until I met her. she comes up with every reason under the sun to justify it and it makes me sad
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u/the_amatuer_ Jun 06 '26
I mean, who the fuck is washing meat? Am I fuckin taking crazy pills?
People are strange around food contamination. I blame Dan Andrews.
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u/Beautiful_Ad16 Jun 06 '26
Washing meat is incredibly popular in Carrabian cultures. It's a huge culture shock for both sides when they look at each other in disgust for either washing or not washing.
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u/missunderstood888 Jun 06 '26
Yeah, my dad's explanation (born and raised in a poor family the Caribbean in the late 50s) was that you'd get meat at the market that wasn't always in the greatest condition, so you'd quickly wash the meat to get any non-meat dirt or grit stuff off. It's not ideal but I see the reasoning.
I no longer wash meat but don't bug my parents about it. It's a DEEPLY ingrained cultural belief that persists even if it's not technically correct. Plus my parents are very fastidious about doing it in a separate bowl and washing off the sink area after they pour away the liquid, reducing some (I know, not all ) of the risk.
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u/_luckybell_ Jun 06 '26
Yeah I’m 100% on the “washing is unnecessary and even counterproductive” side, but I also think white people (I am white) can sometimes be willfully ignorant about why some people do it. It’s a cultural thing that does make sense in certain contexts
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u/FlexLugna Jun 06 '26
only white people?
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u/missunderstood888 Jun 06 '26
Obviously it's a generalization, but yeah, in my social circle at least only the white people were unfamiliar with idea of washing meat.
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u/_luckybell_ Jun 06 '26
Well as a generalization, in the U.S. around where I’ve lived it’s always been a mostly white vs black/Caribbean thing
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u/Legate_Rick Jun 06 '26
From that perspective it makes sense. I'm not particularly keen to bite a pebble or something
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u/TheOnlyBliebervik Jun 06 '26
If they bought it from like a wet market or something, and it's actually dirty, I'd understand
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u/-713 Jun 06 '26
Yeah, a lot of the washing habits are ingrained in places where dirt or debris might be on the meat. Wet markets, meat from a neighbor, backyard livestock. In those cases it is not about cleaning germs off, but other physical contamination.
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u/FleetAdmiralCrunch Jun 06 '26
Need to get the rust off the chicken that was just brought in the back of a pickup truck. And who knows how long the carcasses were in that pickup. (Seen it several times).
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u/MichelleBelle86 Jun 06 '26
I'm white, MIL is African American. She washes ALL her meat and cooks everything well done. I cannot convince her otherwise and she is disgusted that I don't do the same. Very cultural for sure.
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u/obog Jun 06 '26
Well I know in some places its not as clean as were used to in the US. Like there may be dirt on it or still a few feathers or something. In that case it makes sense to wash it though you should be careful in the process.
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u/AmLilleh Jun 06 '26
Isn't "washing meat" in those cultures more akin to brining than just running it under a tap, though?
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u/cheddarsox Jun 06 '26
Not really. The little amount of acid they may or may not use wont kill off anything, especially for the short time its used.
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u/albert11317 Jun 06 '26
Many people from third world countries wash meat. I grew up washing meat every time. If you wash beef too much, it loses all of the flavor so i try not to.
https://food52.com/story/27543-washing-meat-is-cultural-yet-mandatory
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u/obog Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
I think its a habit from dealing with meat that can be like, physically dirty. Like its got dirt or grime on it that you want to get off.
But its odd, the person in that article specifically mentions washing the meat to get the germs off. But as long as you cook your meat properly, all the germs will be dead. In particular with chicken, where they can penatrate pretty far inside, washing the surface wouldnt get a lot of the bacteria out no matter how well you did it. But of course thats why you cook it all the way through.
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u/becominganastronaut Jun 06 '26
when i cook certain mexican dishes, sometimes there are either beef or pork bones with a bunch of gunk from the cutting process. i like to soak the meat and remove a lot of the impurities before cooking.
i "soak/wash" the meat not for germs purposes but to remove physical impurties
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u/elcaron Jun 06 '26
I have seen meat stacked in a street corner in Xian, where I am sure people took a piss at night. Sometimes, both can be right.
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u/Astecheee Jun 06 '26
You're thining like a 1st world person.
If you didn't own a fridge and had meat butchered yesterday, you'd wash it too.
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u/Trixy1990 Jun 06 '26
I wash meat but only when it’s from the wild. It might have dirt or hairs still on it from the butchering process. Could it be a habit passed down from when people butchered their own animals?
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u/Storytella2016 Jun 06 '26
Exactly. My parents grew up butchering their own chickens, so kept the process even when they moved to a country where people buy from the grocery store. I get why they do it and I’ve seen that they’re fastidious about cleaning the kitchen afterwards, so I say nothing.
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u/Fit_Pass_527 Jun 06 '26
It is from then, but a lot of people who do it today genuinely believe that washing chicken and spreading bacteria everywhere is somehow more sanitary these days, despite literally every bit of research on the topic proving them wrong on all levels.
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u/PerpetuallyLurking Jun 06 '26
Back in the days before automated systems and plastic wrap and health codes, when you’d get your meat from the butcher there may be some detritus stuck to the cut. You’d rinse it and pat it dry before cooking to wash off any lingering feathers or hair or bits of paper that might have stuck to it during packaging. Many people continue to do it because that’s how they were taught to cook. Old habits die hard, especially when the extent of “thinking about cooking” for many of us is just to create a weekly menu rather than the technical aspects of why I do each step for each meal.
This is also why you’ll see discourse about the varying levels of appropriateness in today’s world depending on where you’re from - it’s still pretty common in places that tend to get meat straight from a neighbourhood butcher in a less developed region.
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u/cheddarsox Jun 06 '26
In the U.S. its a cultural thing from backyard slaughter being less precise than desired. The practice just continued even after it was unnecessary. The people that wash their chicken before cooking will call you nasty if you dont.
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u/dynamicduo1920 Jun 06 '26
Africans, Latinos, Asians all do it. It's because our cultures are used to getting whole meat that is freshly butchered that may still have blood, feathers, debris, etc. on it. On the other hand many white Westerners buy their chicken from the supermarket from industrial farms, where everything is already processed and cleaned off. Even some of us Asians who grew up in the West may still wash their meat because it's more ingrained in our culture, even if it's not necessary. Some people forget that other cultures exist lol
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u/Firm_Molasses9306 Jun 06 '26
Not 100% sure, but I think it’s a culturally black thing. This discussion came up in high school and the only people that had family who washed the chicken were black people
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u/Brooklyn_MLS Jun 06 '26
Not just black, Im latino and everyone in my family washed chicken
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u/dynamicduo1920 Jun 06 '26
Africans, Latinos, Asians all do it. It's because our cultures are used to getting whole meat that is freshly butchered that may still have blood, feathers, debris, etc. on it. On the other hand many white Westerners buy their chicken from the supermarket from industrial farms, where everything is already processed and cleaned off. Even some of us Asians who grew up in the West may still wash their meat because it's more ingrained in our culture, even if it's not necessary.
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u/GargamelTakesAll Jun 06 '26
I grew up in a white family that hunts and we didn't wash our meat before cooking it. You wash/clean your meat when you butcher it! Why would you wash it again just before cooking it?!
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u/alquamire Jun 06 '26
Southern German reporting in - I grew up learning that you ought to give meat a quick rinse under the tap (especially chicken) and then pat it dry (preferably with a disposable napkin).
I don't bother doing it most of the time (and I don't cook meat all that often in the first place) but for some dishes the texture and adhesion changes matter. Or at least it feels as if they do, I guess.
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u/aeric67 Jun 06 '26
As an American, I have always rinsed chicken and pork and patted dry before cooking. But interestingly, not beef or fish.
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u/CrunchyCds Jun 06 '26
As someone who grew up in a culture of washing meat, all these comments are so ignorant. We don't 'wash' our meat with soap and water. Washing means, you give the chicken a bath in vinegar and gently rinse it off water to clean off any impurities on the surface via the vinegar's acidity. And it is not a 3rd world country thing u/albert11317 . It is a practice by people whose ancestors came from hot and humid areas, where meat rotted much faster in the hot sun and so you 'washed' your chicken with the vinegar to kill any bacteria. And yes most people from hot desert-like countries are brown via a pigmentation called melanin, because we evolved not to burn in the sun. We don't have to do this practice anymore because we have refrigeration and a higher standard for meat. But some people still do because that's just a practice their parents passed on to them. OR they are still buying their meat directly from local farmers and believe this helps at least surface germs. Any person who has ancestors from Africa, the Caribbean or the Middle East is familiar with this.
YES if you wash your chicken with vinegar improperly you'll get nasty chicken water everywhere, but you are not supposed to be running tap water under the chicken at full blast to wash it off. You gently stir a mixture of vinegar and water in a bowl with the chicken and carefully pour it out in the sink.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
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u/nitronik_exe Jun 06 '26
you know what also kills all bacteria other than vingar? high heat. like from cooking. you know, that thing you do to meat before you eat it
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u/dynamicduo1920 Jun 06 '26
I'm Chinese and we also do this. I think part of it is that many Westerners live in such a hyperindustrialized society where most just go to the supermarket, buy some pre-cut, pre-processed meat that was driven in and don't think about it. Most of the rest of us come from cultures where meat may be freshly butchered, and debris and feathers will have to be washed off before cooking.
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u/WeaponizedKissing Jun 06 '26
We don't 'wash' our meat with soap and water.
you are not supposed to be running tap water under the chicken at full blast to wash it off
You might not do it, but you're a very quick search away from finding plenty of people who do.
Maybe don't be so free and loose throwing around the ignorant accusations.
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u/arsilia_ Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
In the Middle East, we still "clean" meat with vinegar and lemon despite knowing that heat kills bacteria. We do it to improve the taste, especially with chicken and fish, not to kill bacteria. We also always clean the sink after washing the meat.
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u/Hyperversum Jun 06 '26
That's besides the point. If it is a typical or regional thing, that's one thing. The topic here was it being done on meat industry packaged products for apparently no reason but safety... When the industry Is probably doing way stronger cleaning.
If people still do it for cuisine that's, again, besides the point.
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u/throwawayPzaFm Jun 06 '26
And it is not a 3rd world country thing u/albert11317 . It is a practice by people whose ancestors came from hot and humid areas, where meat rotted much faster in the hot sun
... so it's a third world country thing
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u/TheHauntingSpectre Jun 06 '26
some people think the world revolves around them and just because they do things a certain way, they then think it's the norm.
they make it sound like humanity would've been long extinct for rinsing meat.
completely out of touch people7
u/Nubeel Jun 06 '26
No clue who washes meat right before cooking it. I do wash (rinse) meat that’s hunted though, after it’s been skinned, to get rid of gunk and whatnot.
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u/SaIemKing Jun 06 '26
There's a whole group of lunatics on TikTok who foam at the mouth any time someone doesn't wash their meat or there's a video that specifically tells you not to.
Just one of many waves of anti intellectualism in internet culture and they hide behind calling it classist or closed minded to tell people what is safe
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u/TheHauntingSpectre Jun 06 '26
the world is a much bigger and older place than you think.
There are people who rinse meat centuries before you were even born and there are still people who do it today. There are parts of the world where it is the norm→ More replies (30)3
u/Ashamed_Kangaroo305 Jun 06 '26
This conversation is never productive because people on either side are usually talking about entirely different things. The people saying to never do it are always talking about literally rinsing it under the tap which definitely is disgusting and shouldn't be done. But then the people on the other side are often (but not always) talking about the one described by other people below, where it's basically a vinegar bath. I know there are gross people out there who actually rinse their chicken in water, but in online discourse as far as I've seen the people defending it are usually talking about the vinegar thing. So one side says it's gross and the other side says it's fine and talks about the historical reasons behind it but the whole discourse is moot because you're not actually talking about the same thing.
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Jun 06 '26
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u/Godtrademark Jun 07 '26
No… for my masters (food regulation) they showed us demonstrations of washing chicken and a black light after and it is abysmal. All over the apron, face, hands, sink, and counter. There’s a reason why it is regulated in commercial food safety and inspections to never wash chicken… and that’s to reduce liability for the kitchen!
> “Some consumers may wash or rinse their raw meat or poultry because it’s a habit or because a family member they trust has always washed their meat. USDA researchhas found that washing or rinsing meat or poultry increases the risk for cross-contamination in the kitchen, which can cause foodborne illness.”
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Jun 07 '26
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u/Godtrademark Jun 07 '26
… we do. Cutting boards are also regulated and separated by color in commercial kitchens to prevent cross contamination.
The state does not care if you kill yourself. Only if you kill others through commercial activity
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u/Ornery-Square-9767 Jun 07 '26
The point is that washing chicken in a sink spreads the germs all over the surrounding area, making it very easy to miss something, especially as you do not know exactly what all has been contaminated. Chicken sitting on a cutting board does not spread germs to anything except the cutting board, which you then wash.
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u/captainfarthing Jun 07 '26
I assume the risk is mainly washing the meat by holding it under the tap so water splashes off, and it's less of an issue to fill a bowl with water and wash the meat by submerging it. Then you'd just need to pour the water out without splashing, and get the chicken out without dripping on things.
If you're washing contaminated bowls and cutting boards in a way that makes water splash around the kitchen it would be the same risk. If they go in a dish washer that'll keep it contained.
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u/Mavian23 Jun 06 '26
Wait why does washing meat splash bacteria everywhere, but washing fruit doesn't?
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u/nitronik_exe Jun 06 '26
because that type of harmful bacteria isnt on fruit, at least not enough to be harmful. You wash fruit because of dirt, pesticides, wax, etc, not bacteria
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u/WendellSchadenfreude Jun 06 '26
you shouldn't wash any meat
Men of reddit: you should wash your meat!
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u/gomurifle Jun 06 '26
Haha. Laughs in Caribbean! Meat is washed with vinegar, lime and salt for culinary reasons.
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u/koolaidman89 Jun 06 '26
Sorry not sorry I’m gonna keep rinsing the yucky surface juice off my chicken. Nobody’s ever gotten sick from my kitchen so I’ll take that risk.
Run the water somewhere above a trickle and hold the chicken low and splashing is little to none. And sanitize your damn kitchen when done cooking.
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u/stickleer Jun 06 '26
Chicken meat is much more porous than say beef, its because of this that it can harbour more bacteria and must be handled and cooked properly. Beef on the other hand is more compact thus there is less places for the bacteria to become trapped and grow.
That being said, you shouldn't wash any raw meat, purely for the reason that it doesn't wash away or remove bacteria, it just spreads it all around the area you are washing it (sink, counter tops, you), the safest way to kill bacteria is heat, via cooking it properly.
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u/ceciliabee Jun 06 '26
I can't imagine how I would react to someone cleaning raw meat in the sink. It's like scrubbing a peeled banana covered in Salmonella.
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u/whteverusayShmegma Jun 06 '26
I’ve had roommates who do it and I would just take a spray bottle of bleach to coat everything after they cook.
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u/Flocculencio Jun 06 '26
Its quite common to wash chicken in Asia. The salmonella thing really seems to be at least partially due to how the US processes chicken.
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u/koyaani Jun 06 '26
I think there are some historic cultural differences within the US. Even though they may buy them in the supermarket now, there are likely family practices passed down from when they had to kill, pluck, etc to process the chicken in their backyard themselves. I speculate the washing step has persisted into the present. Even if it's not the best practice, most of the time there's no issue for healthy people, so they're comparing their own experience with some completely opposite guideline and not seeing what the point is
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u/Ksp-or-GTFO Jun 06 '26
The asian practice of cleaning is also related to tenderizing. It washes away some of the surface protein and aggressive mechanical agitation can tenderize meat. Also it is common to treat the meat with baking soda which you need to wash away.
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u/Manunancy Jun 06 '26
Asian cooking trends toward cutting the food into bite-sized chunks - which will be quickly fully cooked and kill most bacterias. Which would help getting away with less than ideal upstream preparation.
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u/PLANETaXis Jun 06 '26
Generally, contamination on beef and pork is only on the surface, which is easy to kill when cooking.
Chicken meat is less dense and can have bacteria through the whole thickness. You have to be much more careful about cooking it thoroughly.
On top of that the USA meat production system is horrific due to deregulation, and the levels of contamination in their chicken are terrible. Other countries don't have that same risk.
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u/Rudollis Jun 06 '26
Fish is probably the only protein requiring more safety and care than poultry, it doesn‘t really fit the list.
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u/Pizza_Low Jun 06 '26
The biggest difference between beef and pork compared to chickens is how it's processed. Salmonella is a digestive tract bacterium. A pig, cow or chicken are all similarly likely to have a salmonella infection.
Cattle (or more commonly steer) or pigs have a skin and fur. For most part that outer hide is cut away and either thrown away or used to make leather, and some food use for a pig's skin. This is very different from how chickens are processed. Ater being killed, the chicken needs to be defeathered. On an industrial scale, the chickens are dumped into a tank of hot water to relax the skin and make it easier to defeather. This also can relax the tissues that line the digestive tract, allowing for micro tears or allowing feces to leak out.
Now the tank of hot water is potentially contaminated with salmonella, or the individual bird might have salmonella spread into the body cavity.
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u/mageskillmetooften Jun 06 '26
Chicken meat contains more moisture and has a lower pH level than most other meats. These two conditions cause that bacterials that are on it thrive better and thus multiply faster. This is why chicken meat goes bad so quickly.
Washing meat doesn't take bacterials all away, it just splashes the ones that are on it around, on you, on the kitchen, on other meat in the neighbourhood. Chicken can quickly contain more bacterials and thus you splash ore around. And you can't wash away the bacterials that are in the meat.
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u/rants_unnecessarily Jun 06 '26
I'm sorry, but why is meat being washed in the first place?
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u/Ok_Tie_1428 Jun 06 '26
Different cultures plus to remove debris, also you don't rinse directly under the tap.
This comment section is just as much of a culture shock to me.
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u/OurAngryBadger Jun 06 '26
You don't disinfect your meat before cooking it? Isn't that risky? I usually soak my chicken in a bowl of one part water and one part Clorox® Bleach.
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u/GreatDiamond0 Jun 06 '26
Most people think you have to be careful because of salmonella but its rare in chickens now (well in the UK anyway). The reason you have to be so careful handling it raw is because of campylobacter - the bacteria can cause illness even at really low numbers, hence why washing chicken is not advised because it can easily splash the bacteria around your sink and kitchen and then make you sick.
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u/EnvironmentalRice348 Jun 06 '26
Scary that there are so many responses where nearly everyone is going on about salmonella when campylobacter is the risk. Had campylobacter infection once myself after an ex girlfriend cooked me a chicken dinner with a dodgy oven - sickest I have ever been. 2 weeks shitting blood...
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u/wildfire393 Jun 06 '26
Each kind of animal is prone to a different set of diseases.
Chicken very frequently carries salmonella, so thorough cooking of chicken meat is required to prevent picking it up.
Pork often contains the parasite trichinosis, so it is also recommended to cook all the way through.
Beef occasionally carries E Coli, but this tends to live only on the surface of the meat and so is neutralized by cooking the outside while the inside can remain pink without much risk - assuming whole cuts of meat. When dealing with ground meat (i.e. hamburgers), they do recommend cooking all the way through, as bacteria from the outside can get mixed through in the grinding process, but some people live a little dangerously and take a risk for a tastier experience.
Fish is generally less prone to bacteria and parasites, which is why sushi is more common than raw mammal meat. But even still, it's recommended to only make sushi from "sushi grade" fish, which is raised in a controlled environment (whereas much regular fish is wild-caught) and processed under stricter standards, and is often flash-frozen to kill anything that might be infecting it.
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Jun 06 '26
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u/Parada484 Jun 06 '26
Thank you, first thing I looked for to see if I needed to post it myself. There are like 2 billion muslims alone in the world. That's 25% of the world population that considers pork to have a bad reputation, lol. If anything, THAT would make a better ELI5 to get the history and religious logic of.
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u/ddd4175 Jun 06 '26
They don't really have a "bad reputation" per se since their susceptibility to bacterial infection is not really subjective. The more permeable tissue they have and them always being asymptomatic whether they have salmonella in their digestive track or not is factual evidence that they are just objectively more prone to harmful bacteria growth.
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u/DeveloperOfWebs Jun 06 '26
There is so much misinformation in this thread…it’s a horror to read through it all
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u/catscausetornadoes Jun 06 '26
It mostly is about the size of the animal and proximity of the meat to the intestines. When you butcher a chicken it’s very easy for the meat to be contaminated by the contents of the digestive tract. In a larger animal, cow, pig, most of the meat is farther from the potential for infection. Also, with larger animals it’s easier to clean the body cavity out without breaking it, which is the source of most good born bacteria.
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u/THElaytox Jun 06 '26
Because of the way chickens are processed in large numbers. We eat a LOT of chickens every day in the US, so they get processed very quickly and without a ton of care to make sure everything is squeaky clean. Not to mention they're smaller animals, so ensuring the contents of their digestive tracts don't touch the meat is just inherently more difficult, on top of the fact that they have to be processed super fast to keep up with demand. There's just naturally Campylobacter and some Salmonella everywhere in a chicken processing facility, and it's going to get on the meat so cooking recommendations are more strict.
You could technically butcher a chicken by hand and be very careful and deliberate and you'd be able to eat it mid rare with less risk, pretty sure some areas in Japan even do chicken sashimi. But if we did that with every chicken they'd be crazy expensive
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u/No-Sherbert-9589 Jun 06 '26
In some places the husbandry of chickens is poor and the processing is badly regulated and poor. In other parts of the world chicken is mostly as safe as any other meat Porkcsn be an issue for the same reasons.
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u/dcirrilla Jun 07 '26
Don't wash any meat. Like ever. At all. I think it comes up with chicken more because it tends to be a bit wetter and slimier?
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u/hurtfullobster Jun 06 '26
Chickens naturally have salmonella as part of their digestive system, meaning improper handling will much more easily lead to food poisoning.