Should You Wash Raw Chicken? Why the CDC Says No

Generations of home cooks have rinsed raw chicken before cooking it. The instinct makes sense: you’re about to eat this food, so cleaning it first feels responsible. Remove the slime. Wash off anything that might be on it. Start fresh.

The problem is that “cleaning” raw chicken under your tap does the opposite of what you intend.

What Rinsing Actually Does

When water hits the surface of raw chicken, it doesn’t carry bacteria down the drain in an orderly way. It splashes. Fine water droplets hit the chicken, pick up bacteria from the surface, and scatter in every direction. Research from Drexel University demonstrated that rinsing raw chicken causes bacterial contamination to spread to nearby surfaces, the sink basin, faucet handles, and items on the counter — up to 3 feet away from the rinse point.

A 2019 study by Schaffner et al. specifically examined contamination patterns from washing raw poultry and found that sinks and surrounding areas were contaminated at significantly higher rates when chicken was washed compared to when it wasn’t. The contamination pattern was consistent: washing spreads bacteria that weren’t going anywhere in the first place.

The two bacteria primarily at issue are Campylobacter jejuni and Salmonella. Campylobacter is actually the most common cause of bacterial foodborne illness in the United States — more cases than Salmonella, though it gets less press because its outbreaks are typically individual rather than mass events. Both bacteria are present on raw chicken with enough frequency that all raw chicken should be treated as potentially contaminated.

Why Rinsing Doesn’t Work

To kill Campylobacter and Salmonella on chicken skin, you’d need water well above 120°F sustained for enough time to achieve meaningful bacterial reduction. Your kitchen tap, even on the hottest setting, typically delivers 110-115°F water at best. Cold water rinsing, the most common approach, does nothing to bacterial populations at all.

What cold water does do is mechanically dislodge loosely attached surface material, including bacteria, and carry it in all directions via splash. You’re not cleaning the chicken. You’re relocating the bacteria onto your sink, counter, hands, and anything else within splash range.

The bacteria you’re most worried about are invisible and tasteless. You won’t see them on the chicken before rinsing, and you won’t see their absence after rinsing. The rinsing feels like cleaning but provides no measurable safety benefit while creating a real contamination risk in the kitchen.

What Actually Makes Chicken Safe

Cooking to 165°F internal temperature kills Campylobacter and Salmonella reliably and essentially instantaneously. The heat denatures bacterial proteins — the same fundamental process that changes the texture and color of the meat. Once the internal temperature hits 165°F throughout the thickest part of the chicken, the pathogens are dead. See denaturation for the protein chemistry behind this.

The key is measuring temperature, not judging by color or time. A thermometer inserted into the thickest part, away from bone, is the only way to confirm the chicken reached 165°F. Color is unreliable — chicken can look white and cooked at sub-safe temperatures. The safe internal temperatures guide has the full temperature table.

The Sliminess Explanation

Many people who wash chicken report they’re removing “sliminess” from the surface. This is real — raw chicken does have a slightly slick surface texture from surface proteins, moisture, and sometimes purge liquid (the liquid that accumulates in the package, often mistaken for blood but actually mostly water and myoglobin).

That surface texture has nothing to do with bacterial contamination. The sliminess is proteins, not bacteria. It disappears completely when the chicken is cooked, regardless of whether you rinsed it first. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels if surface moisture is an issue for cooking technique (dry skin browns better). But the sliminess is not a safety concern.

After Handling Raw Chicken

The cross-contamination risk from raw chicken doesn’t only come from rinsing. It comes from every surface the raw chicken touches.

After handling raw chicken:

• Wash hands with soap for 20 seconds before touching anything else
• Wash the cutting board, knife, and any other surface that contacted raw chicken before using them for other food
• Don’t let the chicken or its juices contact ready-to-eat food — salad, cooked food, bread, fruit

The cross-contamination article covers all the specific transfer routes in a kitchen. Chicken drippings in the refrigerator (from a package not placed in a container) contaminating food on the shelf below is one of the most common scenarios.

A Cultural Note

Washing chicken is deeply embedded in many culinary traditions — Caribbean, West African, South Asian, and others. This is worth acknowledging honestly: the habit persists for cultural reasons as well as instinctive ones, and the CDC’s guidance sometimes meets resistance precisely because it conflicts with ingrained practice.

The safety concern doesn’t negate the cultural context. But the mechanism is what it is: water creates splatter, splatter carries bacteria, nearby surfaces become contaminated. The same bacteria that cause illness in the US exist in chicken globally. The guidance isn’t culturally specific.

If the feel of raw chicken bothers you, pat it dry with paper towels, which you then discard. You get the same result (dry, easier-to-brown surface) without the contamination spread.

Cooking to 165°F does what the rinse was supposed to do. It actually works.