Enough is enough!

I'm talking about buying pre-packed, raw chicken, from the supermarkets where apparently some 73% of the content, as well as the wrapping is laden with the Campylobacter bug, which is responsible for the words 'food poisoning' that we should all be concerned about, despite the knowledge that cooking the chicken properly should kill the bacteria.

Steps to avoid the bug contaminating other areas in the preparation area include covering and chilling raw chicken and not washing raw chicken (as washing may spread the bug), but cooking it thoroughly and then washing your hands and used utensils thoroughly after handling. I use bleach for example.

However, cooking Chicken without washing it would be fine if we knew that the Chicken was clean in the first place, meaning that there was no trace of the guts remaining. I would never cook a chicken without checking the insides first, removing the 'elastic' band that holds the legs and wings in place to make it look bigger and/or 'plumped up'. The amount of 'rubbish' including a fair amount of fat that they leave behind is disgraceful, but then it all weighs and we are paying for it!

Campylobacter poisoning often develops a few days after eating contaminated food and can lead to symptoms that include abdominal pain, severe diarrhoea, sometimes vomiting and you feeling like nothing on earth! Further, it can affect you forevermore sparking off irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), reactive arthritis and in rare cases something called Guillain-Barré syndrome, which is a serious condition of the nervous system. At its worst it can kill you and so one thing for sure is that if you have ever had food poisioning as a result of it, you will most likely be put off chicken forever!

For more information see http://www.food.gov.uk/news-updates/campaigns/chicken-challenge/what-is-campylobacter where I personally do not accept item 2).

What say you members?

Whether it is Chicken Fresh meat all should be washed before use and even more so any Offal whether it be Heart,Liver or Kidney..

Cooking from frozen probably helps to avoid the problem generally Shirley; providing you make sure it really is cooked through, otherwise you could be in just as much danger, but really not sure about chicken that way.

Presumably you use a thermometer?

Wonder why there was never a problem with livestock years ago?

For example my grandparents would keep Rabbits, Chickens, Pigs etc and kill them for the table whenever required, but there was no mention of these awful bacteria then, what changed?