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.
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.
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.
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...
