Should you wash raw chicken before cooking?

The USDA, CDC, and food safety agencies in the United Kingdom and elsewhere all advise against washing raw poultry, and the reasoning is mechanical. Rinsing does not meaningfully reduce the bacterial load on the meat, since salmonella and campylobacter adhere to the surface and are not removed by running water. What rinsing does accomplish is aerosolizing them: water hitting the chicken splashes droplets carrying bacteria onto the sink, faucet, counters, and nearby dishes, and observational studies of home cooks have found contamination spread across the kitchen after washing.

The habit has cultural roots and is common across many cuisines, often as a carryover from times and places where poultry was less clean at purchase or from practices of rinsing with vinegar or lime that serve flavor and texture purposes. Those are legitimate culinary choices, and the safe way to do them is to keep the meat in a bowl, avoid running water, and sanitize everything afterward. Patting the chicken dry with paper towels, which improves browning, is fine and discards the towel.

Cooking is the step that actually makes chicken safe. An internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit, verified with a thermometer at the thickest point, kills the pathogens that washing was supposed to remove. The related habits that reduce risk are the unglamorous ones: a separate cutting board for raw poultry, washing hands with soap for twenty seconds after handling, cleaning and sanitizing any surface the raw chicken or its packaging touched, and not placing cooked chicken back on the plate that held it raw.