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Food Safety and Wood Countertops:
Myth, Common Sense and Truth
By Ken Williamson
When I began building wood countertops in 1999, the most common statement made by people was, “but wood is not safe.” At that time, many of my customers were European who had wood countertops in Europe and wanted them here, in the U.S. I also observed that they did not share the "is wood safe" concern. I started asking questions and discovered that wood countertops were much more common in Europe than in the U.S. For example, I learned that in Denmark, with a population of five million people, over 30% of all countertop surfaces sold are wood.
The Creation of the Bacteria and Wood Myth
In the U.S. the concern with using wood cutting surfaces and the fear of bacteria produced a number of “research” studies in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Generally, these studies compared wood and plastic cutting boards with respect to harboring of pathogenic bacteria, such as e coli and salmonella. Findings, published in such diverse journals as the "American Society of Microbiological News" and "The Journal of Food Protection," ranged from reporting that wood kills all bacteria in 3 minutes to wood harbors bacteria and bonds to the wood fiber. By 1995, the entire inquiry had become bogged down in questionable methodology, conflicting results, and often irrelevant detail. What is clear is that no one had a lock on the "truth" about wood cutting surfaces and bacteria.
While the academics attempted to define and control what they were studying, the "conventional wisdom" of the day was that wood should not be used in the kitchen. This belief was most prevalent during the 1970’s and1980’s as plastic cutting boards were being introduced.
The "wood is bad" message included wood countertops, regardless of whether they were being used for food preparation. The image created was that of nasty little e coli critters, who, after appearing spontaneously, spent their time lurking in the wood fiber for the first opportunity to leap across the kitchen and contaminate food. Not a very pleasant image - unless you are selling plastic cutting boards and countertops.
A Common Sense Approach
It is a fact that wood has been the primary food preparation surface world wide for several thousand years. In the U.S., the "kitchen table" was found in most every home from the 1500’s until the 1920’s. Until the 1970’s large, deep, end-grain "butcher blocks" were used in every butcher shop and meat department in the country. Whether you wanted a steak or two ducks, they were brought from the locker and cut up on these blocks.
Today, thousands of wood cutting boards are sold in department stores, high-end kitchen shops, and every supermarket in the country.
Given the long history and high number of people using wood cutting surfaces, common sense holds that if wood was "naturally" harboring death dealing critters, there would be far fewer people in the world. At the very least, high death rates from poisoning would have attracted a lot more attention from the public health community and certainly the press. Coincidently, not until the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, when plastic was introduced, did the concerns about wood and bacteria reach very high levels.
When I reviewed the "research studies" more closely, I found a complete lack of any mention or discussion of cleaning the cutting boards - wood or plastic. Generally, the methodology was to put chicken fat on the boards, maintain a certain temperature for a certain period of time, and then measure the remaining bacteria. The conclusion I reached was that most of what we think we know about the subject was based on research that had little, if any, connection to how we actually behave in our kitchens.
One real world study did deal more with how people behave. After a salmonella outbreak in Northern California in 1990, an analysis was conducted by the Public Health Department at the University of Davis and published in the "Journal of Epidemiology" in 1992. Looking for the point source of the outbreak, a total of 385 people who did not get sick were interviewed and the cutting surfaces being used were documented.
The report noted a 50% less likely chance of getting sick if wood cutting boards were being used. In the scientific world, this is called an "association or correlation." It does not prove anything nor can you state that using wood cutting boards were the reason people did not get sick. However, with a 50% negative correlation, it is a mathematical certainty that whatever was going on was not due to chance.