Southern Yellow Pine Cutting Boards

[MichaelMouse]

Without wading into the argument... My mother used a pine cutting board for 30+ years, (I'm sure she still has it) I'm sure many of you grew up eating food the was cut on pine boards.

We cut meat at the market on an ancient end grain maple block which we scraped and salted every night.   Purpose of end grain is that it closes as the cleaver is lifted, instead of leaving a rough place for bacteria to hide.  That, and the kosher salt pulled a bit of moisture from the air to foster osmotic rupture of any bacteria present. 

Of course, the suet hanging outside for the birds doesn't seem to decay much at all, either....

[FS7]

It is a widely known fact that linoleum has anti-microbial properties, probably for the same reason that wood has--it is made from linseed oil, pine wood dust and cork.  For that reason it was a flooring of choice in hospitals.  But that flooring of choice was based upon the full corridor width rolls that were glued down, and not the 12" x 12" squares that are more common nowadays.  Each of the seams represents a bacteria trap, greatly overshadowing the anti-microbial properties.  

The tests I read compared bacteria growth with meat juices left on the surface of both plastic and wood cutting boards.  It demonstrates that the wood cutting boards performed better in keeping the bacteria count down.  It did not compare cleaned wood and cleaned plastic cutting boards (cleaned after use).  So I don't consider those valid for the way I use cutting boards.  Further the end grain boards retain more juices more deeply and are more difficult to clean.  

So if you want a cutting board that is marginally better in fighting bacteria when left "dirty" (with the meat juices in place), then use wood.  If you clean, or want to clean your cutting boards for better reduction in bacteria count, then plastic that can be put in a dishwasher is a far better choice.

I'm not entirely sure why you love plastic this much, especially on a woodworking site, but the research doesn't support that. 

http://jfoodprotection.org/doi/pdf/10.43...8X-57.1.23

This field of study wouldn't make a whole lot of sense unless they studied things after sanitization, using multiple methods. Wood was found to be safe when cleaning with hot water and detergent (I don't use soap myself). Plastic was found to be very difficult to clean unless essentially new, and the efficacy of home dishwashers is unknown as far as I can tell. You're still subscribing to the very common myth that plastic is instantly sanitized by a dishwasher (it's not) and that wood needs the same sanitization procedures (it doesn't).

[Alan S]

I know you guys just like to argue, but it seems you are not contradicting one another but simply focussing on different factors.

Wood seems to harbor bacteria much less well than previously thought, and may kill bacteria, but we don't know exactly where this effect will fail.  (Do you need to make sure the wood dries completely, are there some types of bacteria that are not killed, does oiling the wood make it behave as plastic, do crevices serve as bacterial reservoirs...?) Bacteria seem to stick well to plastic, so if it is treated as is wood, it seems to be less safe.  Dishwasher cleaning in sufficiently hot water is quite effective at getting rid of bacteria, and this treatment is more appropriate for plastic than wood.  A very effective treatment for any surface for killing bacteria is chlorine bleach.  These facts don't limit you to a single reasonable course of action.

If cutting something other than meat, I'd definitely use wood since it's nicer than plastic.