chopping veg on a board used for raw chicken

[HighwayDragon]

I've just chopped up some chicken, thrown it in the pan, remembered the onion so went to use the same board and knife. DP practically squealed about cross contamination, and us all being ill, I put the raw onion straight into the pan with the raw chicken! He wanted me to get a clean board and knife to then put it with raw meat anyway making more washing up for me.

He's an idiot right?

I don't know the Science of it but I thought it related to cooked and raw meat. In the butchers they have to separate out cooked and raw meat because if the raw meat touches the cooked meat there could be cross contamination, because the cooked meat is going to be eaten without it being cooked again.
I am extremely careful about kitchen hygiene as anyone who has had food poisoning knows, you feel as though you are going to die. My husband and I were ill for over a week when we both eat a M&S prawn salad that we had had in our boot, while we travelled a couple of hundred miles. You would only wish FP on your worse enemies.
So I think your DH was wrong but I don't think you can be too careful.

Onions are poisonous to cats and dogs - could that have it?

Here's the thing about onions. Scroll near the end for the superstitions about them. That's what I forgot.

My mum wasn't stupid, but the idea that a cut onion could draw infection into itself and protect you from disease, would have been very strong in her pre-antibiotic, pre-NHS childhood.

The idea that they then became reservoirs for bacteria and infection would have seemed to have been a logical conclusion too.

If you grew up hearing that it would probably stay with you.

I always had in the back of my mind (my mum, probably) that rust was a big risk factor for tetanus. It isn't. I think it's that if you step on a rusty nail in the garden it might be contaminated with tetanus bacteria from the soil and basically vaccinate you with live tetanus.

Can anyone answer this:

A childhood friend who became a gravedigger almost died from an infection apparently caused by contaminated soil. My mum who got it from his mum, insisted that it was tetanus.

It might have been true. I don't know. But he was definitely very ill.

I imagine there are all sorts of nasties deep in the ground in a cemetery that you're probably not susceptible to as a visitor touching the surface but if you're a gravedigger you might come into contact with.

But then I've trod on freshly churned mud in cemeteries and thrown a handful of earth on the coffin without warnings or ill effects.

It makes me think my friend was unlucky. Or maybe you do have to have regular vaccinations if you do that kind of job.