food safety

I was shocked when I read this in a recent New York Times editorial:

Thorough cooking will kill the bacteria, but people often use the same knife to cut raw meat and then to chop vegetables. Or they plop a pork chop on a plate, cook it and then contaminate it by putting it back on the original plate.

Really? People don't wash their knives after cutting raw meat? I thought that was the most basic rule of being in the kitchen. They put cooked meat on the same plate as raw meat? Seriously? 

The major meat-raising facilities aren't going to quit using antibiotics in the feed any time son. It's not realistic for everyone in the United States to go all cage-free organic. We can't trust the FDA or USDA to monitor the health of every piece of meat that's raised. We have to take matters into our own hands and that means washing those hands, and everything else in the kitchen, while we prepare food.