I follow ServSafe guidelines. My certification is lapsed, but I still follow them.

Just basic common sense. I rinse fruit under the tap before eating and wash hands before handling food. No raw meat touches cooked food or food to be eaten raw. Also we have no animals in the house. But I certainly don't disinfect packets. No one has ever been ill from anything eaten at home.

My son had culture-proven Salmonella poisoning when he was in middle school; we had recently eaten at a restaurant with a salad bar and he was the only one who had eaten the spinach. We were convinced that was the source, though to our knowledge, no one else had fallen ill.

The lady from the health department told us another child from his school had also been ill with Salmonella, but we couldn’t determine a common source from which they could’ve become ill, other than both of us moms grocery shopped at Kroger and both kids attended the same school; they didn’t even know each other or have any classes together.

Anyway to make a long story short, the health department said bagged lettuce and other greens are a common source of food borne illnesses, as are organic fruits and vegetables (different cleaning processes?).

So no bagged salads or veggies or presliced fruits for us; all produce is washed just before using. We don’t eat raw cookie dough or cake batter or anything with uncooked eggs or raw flour. All meat is cooked to temperature and leftovers are promptly refrigerated. And I wash my hands constantly with anti-bacterial soap during food prep.

I usually give plastic wrapped cheese a quickeinse or wipe. No sterilization.

I just ate a maretplace apple. I washed ai and removed the sticker.

We don't have any immune compromised people here, so my way is similar to Floral's. The stores where I shop are remarkably clean, and things from The Farm are also cleaned. I do gently wash produce, and will use a little eco dish liquid if there's actual dirt, like on my home grown lemons, and give a little more attention to things where one eats the skin.

I am very careful to prevent cross contamination from raw, not wanting to make festering whatever, but don't bother too much with the parts that are going to be well cooked. Raw meats are in the county approved bottom of the fridge drawer.. I'm especially careful with towels and sponges. But I don't wear gloves unless it's to keep my hands warm while working with cold stuff, or if I'm doing something fiddly with chicken, I'll use sandwich making gloves (the loose plastic bag kind, rather than tight latex) which I can slip off onto the messy tray, and back on again without touching the outsides. I figure gloves are a crutch, unless one has a cut, and washing hands well and frequently is more useful. That said, I have trouble getting the minions to realize they mustn't put something from the floor, like the recycling bin, on top of food containers, etc., before they do it. There are so many opportunities for incidental cross contamination, I begin to think my efforts are more ritual than reality.

So, even though I'm very careful not to spread raw egg around, there's only something like 1 in 20,000 that are infected, and they're much less likely than that to occur in the pastured hen's eggs I buy. It's an odds game, but unlikely enough to not know for sure if it was the cake batter I tasted (really necessary in making a cake without recipe) rather than some unknown contamination from something else.

Packaging doesn't bother me.

I tend to not get too worried, but use some common sense precautions. Because I grow so many of my own vegetables and fruits and I know that they are grown in composted cow manure, I'm very diligent about washing before eating. I do, however, occasionally break my own rule while I'm in the garden and just dust a tomato off on my shirt, or a green bean or sprig of broccoli, or pluck an apple or a peach from the tree and eat it. Yeah, I know about e. coli and all, but I do it anyway.

I also have my own eggs from my own chickens and beef from my own cattle, so I don't hesitate to eat either of those things raw. I wouldn't consider doing that with commercially available beef, but I know where my animals live and how they are cared for and processed as opposed to whatever is at the grocery. I do taste cake batter or cookie dough, even after having been warned about raw eggs and raw flour.

I raise my own chickens but still sanitize my sink and cutting board/utensils when preparing raw chicken. I wash my eggs before I use them. I don't worry too much about packaging from things like cheese or a box of crackers but am diligent about cooking poultry to 165F and pork to 145F, minimum.

I'm also pretty careful about leaving food sitting out, leftovers get promptly put away if they are things that require refrigeration. I only wear gloves when preparing hot peppers but I do wash my hands regularly during food prep and I use soap, not just the quick rinse that I often see TV chefs do.

I have two house cats and so am diligent about cleaning surfaces before preparing food and the sweeping and vacuuming is nearly constant.

Because we have a farm and animals, I've been in contact with pretty much every bodily fluid known to man. I've been slobbered on, sneezed on, pooped on, sprayed with everything from Neem Oil to copper fungicide, stepped in things I can't even identify, been up to my shoulder inside a pregnant cow, held sick and dying animals, moved carcasses. I'm not too worried about germs, obviously!

Annie

I wash hands, knives, and boards with soap after poultry, meat, fish. I cook things to at least minimum temp. That's about it.

Food illness, turistas, what have you, has hardly ever happened to me, no matter what I eat or where. I can actually only remember one time (when I decided to eat a salmon filet raw despite it not being sashimi grade fish.)

Don't know why. I would like to credit a robust gut biome, but have no scientific basis for that.

Just off the top of my head:

I sanitize my groceries before putting them away at home - using 70% isopropyl alcohol & paper towels.

Stores may seem clean, but other customers might not be - over the years I've witnessed plenty of strangers in stores coughing or sneezing uncovered within close range of merchandise - not just food either. Think for a moment how many people might pick up/touch merchandise before you do - including employees.

Also follow safe food handling practices, and don't leave cooked dishes sitting out uncovered or for long periods of time.

Never rinse raw meats either.

Other than using 3 different cutting boards (one for meat, one for produce and one for breads) and washing my hands often, I really don't do anything very specific. IMO, part of the reason food borne illnesses seem to be so frequent is that we have over-sanitized ourselves to the point where many of us are over-sensitive to these issues and lack natural defenses. Much the same way that excessive use of antibiotics has lowered resistance to infections and various diseases.

As my dad used to say "a little dirt won't hurt you " :-)) In fact, some exposure is probably a good idea!

Clarification following Carol's post--when I talked about the stores being clean, I mean of dirt. You can 't see bacteria, of course. Travelling, I've seen plenty of dirty stores with dirty goods. At the scrupulously clean stores, one can also see general good handling. But I agree with Gardengal on challenging the immune system in general. When they start tracing disease vectors to handling packaging is soon enough for me to worry about it.

Rampant paranoia runs amok!

Food health experts have often warned against buying mixed greens or precut fruits/vegetables. Too much handling, too many surfaces exposed. Buy the whole product and cut it yourself.

@gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9) wrote: "As my dad used to say "a little dirt won't hurt you " My mom always said, "You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die." Usually, when I'd complain about grit or similar.

I think I use pretty normal precautions, but don't really sanitize anything in the kitchen. I use cutting boards for meat that can go in the DW, but don't really cook much meat or fish that requires cutting except on your plate. I'm a compulsive handwasher when in the kitchen. I think from my years as a hairdresser, I cannot stand to have anything on my hands.

I guess the one really fussy thing for me is kitchen towels. I use tons of them and never use one for hands and dishes. I see people wiping their (albeit clean) hands on a kitchen towel then use it to dry a dish. Nope.

I agree, Oly.

Lacy, I wash all greens. I rarely buy those bags of mixed greens. I have seen people use them directly without washing first. However, just a few days ago i came upon an article saying that certain types of packaged mixed green should not be washed. I thinks the gist wasnot that they didn’t need to be, but that they should not be washed. Huh?

Maybe I can find the article.

The other thing I do is to be mindful for whom I vote. Anyone eager to mindlessly slash regulatory agencies is not interested in keeping anyone safe.

I'm very careful with the brands I buy, but I do buy some prewashed greens and salads. The process they have for triple washing will get them a lot cleaner than what I usually do. Rewashing them is just an opportunity to introduce whatever contaminant is in your water or kitchen. Obviously, for the immune compromised, a sterile (or as close to sterile as possible) kitchen is required, and cleaning and cooking the produce is vital. Otherwise, however, remember that you do also want to challenge your immune system to keep it healthy. Most people I know (including me), wash produce, but don't obsess over it. The only time I've had food poisoning was in my 20’s when I was foolish enough to get a salad at a ballgame—and I'm pretty sure the culprit was the sour cream, not the greens.